Beyond Imagination

The final report of our group can be see here:Verbal communication is one of the most effective ways that we use to transfer information. It is often the case that we take this for granted, whilst there are enough cases of people with speech impediments or physical impairments that require alternative methods to communicate. An example of such a situation is Roger Ebert who developed thyroid cancer and lost his ability to speak. Currently he is using a Mac application which involves typing thoughts which are translated into words by the computer. We hope that our research will provide a base for future projects to eliminate the typing process of this application.

Our project aims to create solutions for these disadvantaged people by creating a game setting where communication and interaction is achieved through brain activity. Our idea is to create a quiz in which one person will answer questions whilst the other has to guess the answers by looking at the different brain pattern of the other person. However, after realizing the difficulty of associating different brain patterns with actual thoughts or feelings, we thought of simplifying the quiz by substituting the brainwaves with movements of the “cube”. We thought we could assign different responses to the movements of the cube and thereby create a key, or in other words create a cyber language which could be used for communication purposes. However the preliminary stage of this new communication method will be limited as we can only assign 8 movements to the cube.

For us this method seemed easier because interpreting cube movements is easier than interpreting brain waves. We believe this research not only useful for entertainment purposes but also to explore future possibilities of communication through brain activity.

At this point we would like to introduce our research question:
“Is communication through brain waves feasible in a game setting?”