Starting from the description below (it is from a workshop that will be held at the CHI 2008 conference), take this a step further and imagine and describe a new brain computer interface, something that you think could work within the next 20 years.
Pick a brain activity to measure (an emotion, a state of mind, some other parameter) and describe how you could use this measurement in an application. You should use the brain as an additional input to the interface, rather than a hands-free interface for disabled users, but you could also send back information from the computer to the brain.
You can also go further if you like and assume that system that can detect some of the user's thoughts and respond to them. Think of what kind of user interface you would want for this. Unlike current interfaces, it would not be limited by physical input or output devices, nor, perhaps by the user's perceptual and motor systems.
This is not something that is supposed to be realistic
now -- think about something that would be nice to do or have, assuming
20 years of plausible advances in technology from the present.
You will be asked to give a short (5 minute or less) presentation on your design. Describe your interface, what it does, how it works, for whom it is designed, what benefits it provides, interesting ideas that it incorporates.
Everyone should prepare your slides and email them to us before the next
class
(October 16),
but we will spread out the actual presentations over the next few weeks.
Advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging technologies provide us with the increasing ability to interface directly with activity in the brain. Researchers have begun to use these technologies to build brain-computer interfaces, in which patients with severe motor disabilities can communicate and control devices with thought alone. Although removing the need for motor movements in computer interfaces is challenging and rewarding, we believe that the full potential of brain sensing technologies as an input mechanism lies in the extremely rich information it could provide about the state of the user. Having access to this state information is valuable to human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers and opens up at least three distinct areas of research: controlling computers with thought alone, evaluating systems and interfaces, and building adaptive user interfaces. Although this is not the focus of this workshop, we will consider accepting a small number of position papers proposing methods of using techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to send information directly to the brain.
Specifically, this workshop aims to identify and discuss: