This is a remote-controlled helicopter that works in tandem with a NeuroSky MindWave Mobile EEG headset. It reads the waves running through that skull of yours and translates them into flight commands for the helicopter itself. The Puzzlebox Orbit is spherical, with the outer rings protecting the rotor blades from hitting walls, furniture and other obstacles. The whole system works with a docking pyramid, which acts as the relay between the EEG headset and the Orbit helicopter itself.

Yes, the helicopter can still work with just an app on a smartphone or tablet, but it’s really this EEG-based interface that makes this so unique. Of course, it’s going to take some practice, but fun toys like the Orbit can certainly help with your concentration and focus. They’ve already reached the fundraising goal of their Kickstarter campaign, so they’re just working on getting ready for some mass production. You can still get one of the early units by pledging at the $189+ level, getting delivery some time next month.

Check out puzzlebox.info for the latest information on this project.

[Source]

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I tend to dream quite a lot when I sleep, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced lucid dreaming. If you want to be able to control your dreams, the Remee sleep mask might be an interesting way to do it.

Not much bulkier than a conventional sleeping mask, Remee is different in that it contains six red LED lights, three for each eye. This isn’t the first “lucid dreaming” mask to use this kind of idea, but the developers found that existing products were both too expensive and too bulky. Remee brings it down to a much more manageable price and size.

The blinking red lights can permeate your eyelids, but they’re unlikely to affect you when you’re in non-REM sleep. When you are in REM, though, they will “bleed into your dreams, presenting a perfect chance to become lucid.” The lights are programmable and they’re designed only to kick in after you’ve been asleep for four to five hours, presumably when you’ve achieved deeper REM sleep. I’m not sure how this facilitates lucid dreaming, but it is suppose to “enhance” your REM sleep.

This Kickstarter project has gained quite the fan following. The “mad scientist” creators were only asking for $35,000, but they’ve managed to raise over $500,000 for this project. I guess some dreams can come true.

[Source]

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More specifically, warfare could easily slip into the realm of neurological warfare, in case it hasn’t already done so. An enemy is much easier to defeat when he’s hallucinating about bugs crawling all over his body. Similarly, biological and chemical warfare in the form of drugs could have the ramifications of impaired judgement, perception, or all kinds of other things in your adversary.

And it’s not like the military would be necessarily adverse to using something on their own soldiers too. Drugs that increase alertness and reduce the perception of fatigue could prove quite useful (albeit possibly kinda scary). They discuss blocking memories, which could be effective for PTSD victims. The Royal Society also talks about “neural interface systems” (NIS) that would allow weapons to be controlled by the human mind.

By identifying active military research into neuroscience, the Royal Society paints a future of warfare influenced by neuroscience applications as a very real possibility. As well as neuroscience’s massive potential for benign medical applications, the Royal Society is seeking to raise awareness among the scientific community of “hostile” applications.

Check out the video below for more. That mind-reading computer could very well be the next logical step.

The post The Future of Warfare Is Inside Your Head (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

We’re getting that much closer to the robot apocalypse. We already have computers beating us at trivia games. We already have robot flying machines that can act like a swarm. And now, we have computers that can read our minds, decipher our thoughts, and reconstruct them into comprehensible speech.

To be completely fair, the tech isn’t quite there yet, but they are making some monumental strides. The study was published in PLos Biology and it describes the initial steps made in converting brain activities into audio. The computer program effectively reads your brain waves, figures out what those waves mean, and plays it back as a sound.

“This is exciting in terms of the basic science of how the brain decodes what we hear,” said Robert Knight, a senior member of the team and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Potentially, the technique could be used to develop an implantable prosthetic device to aid speaking, and for some patients that would be wonderful. The next step is to test whether we can decode a word when a person imagines it. That might sound spooky, but this could really help patients. Perhaps in 10 years it will be as common as grandmother getting a new hip,” Knight said. 

The video on The Guardian illustrates some basic word recognition, but you can see how more advances would be able to take this concept to a much higher level. Forget about motion control and Kinect for Windows 8. We could have mind control for Windows 9. Who needs speech recognition when you can just think it instead?

The post Resistance Is Futile: Mind-Reading Computer Voices Your Thoughts appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Many expected the original iPad to be released with the features the iPad 2 finally came out with, though it took Apple nearly a year after to bring that seemingly basic feature –- a camera — to reality. But those critical of Apple for their slow moving product releases need to keep one thing in mind, it’s all about the money. Apple, alongside millions of developers single handedly kick started a $2B industry that barely existed before; the tablet computing market.

Apple was successful at this in part by their ability to create a cult-like following. You could say it first started with the advertising campaign of trendy, fashionable silhouettes of extremely animated and excited figures using the iPod music player. This created a “coolness” factor that we had never seen before, especially not from what we were used to: Microsoft.

The popular Apple vs. PC marketing campaign instilled a mindset of superiority amongst those who use Apple products. By boosting the ego of the consumer, Apple had subconsciously triggered the emotion of desire and worthiness. You are better if you use Apple, that simple.

The Experience
This all takes me to the Canadian Apple event of Friday March 25. I had experienced Apple’s mastermind sales and marketing genius first-hand when they made available to international markets the second-generation iPad tablet; the iPad 2.

The mass hysteria part will always be true with Apple, but I would say the hysteria comes more from Apple the company than it does from the Apple customers. They use effective sales techniques like the excitement factor, which is totally fine, but Apple has taken it to an extreme new level.  If you attend one of their launch parties you will know what I mean.  The video below will give you a glimpse of what I am speaking of.

The Hardware
By now you must be dying to hear what I think about the actual iPad 2. The unit I picked up was the 32GB Wi-Fi Black model. Well, in one word, meh. It’s obviously better than the original iPad in some ways, but others, it is not. By the way the employees were acting at the store this thing should be able to cook, clean and roll joints for you.

The hardware, although lighter and slimmer, is a bit harder to hold because it is so slim (which for some reason makes it a bit more slippery).  It seems like being the slimmest and thinnest around may not be your best bet Apple.

Processing power is a lot faster than the first iPad. Giving you a “custom” A5 dual-core 1GHz chip.  Swiping through iOS couldn’t get any quicker. Launching apps and games: amazing. Performance is what you would expect and more from a second-generation unit.

The Cameras
Dual cameras are fantastic. I was really excited to do video chat with Skype. Although I haven’t used Facetime yet, I’m hoping it will be much better than the 2x exploded iPhone Skype app can deliver.

Having a rear-facing camera on a tablet is a bit of a bad joke. Sure, you can hold it and walk around filming but that’s not exactly ideal. And if you plop it in a stand to act as a tripod you will have a hell of a time angling it properly, since the location of the camera is in the top corner and almost all stands tilt the iPad on an angle back and facing down. I put it way up high on a bookshelf, kind of like a surveillance camera and it was able to get the right angle to film our table.

The Apple camera app is very basic, no settings, no nothing. Record, pause and playback. I was surprised to find that you can adjust the aperture by tapping different areas of your screen which will in turn set the exposure for that area.

The HD rear camera has an incredible field of view and is macro capable. In lowlight you can expect very orange and granular video.
There are reports of spotty WiFi dropping signal intermittently, I had no issues in my tests.

Sound quality is much better going both ways; the mic picked up audio very well with Skype and in the video recorder app. The external speaker is capable of synthesizing a bit of artificial virtual depth that was definitely lacking in the first-gen.

Video Mirroring
I went ahead and shelled out an extra $45 for the Apple Digital AV adapter.  The output to our Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD was very crisp and smooth.  Mirrored display could be very useful far beyond Angry Birds.  The downside: you don’t get the entire width of your iPad on screen, just height.

What Went Wrong
There is indeed a light bleeding problem on the iPad 2 LCD. In fact, they are allover the place and not just near the home button. It is prominent near the home button, but also all across the top of the LCD and in the dark, you can definitely see an increased brightness on the edges of the inner bezel in many locations.  This is unacceptable and shouldn’t be happening on any Apple product.

The new form factor has caused for the edges to be beveled so much that all your ports are now on an angle; bit of a nightmare to plug things into. Not so much the headphone jack, but the Apple connector – it’s just awkward on an angle and never feels right.

I still think iOS settings are severely lacking. I want more control than Apple will give me. Each day that goes by that I do not jailbreak this thing is another day spent living in the matrix.

The Bottom Line
For the price, the iPad 2 offers very good value. You will never find another tablet than an Apple iPad that will give you access to such an immense library of applications and games. The hardware and software, although with some quirks, is not nearly going to give you the headaches a Microsoft tablet could give you.   And you can count on Apple to release updates and fixes, that’s one good thing about it. I was pleasantly surprised with YouTube performance, it can stream HD without any frame freezing, the interface still sucks and should be just like the website, but it blows away anything Netflix could get you.

But with an LCD bleed like this it should be alot cheaper, like $200 cheaper unless Apple plans to fix it.  I’m really looking forward to what Motorola and RIM have to show us.

Filmed with the Flip Ultra HD, edited on iMovie.

Song by Radiohead – Dollars and Cents

The post Apple iPad 2 Review appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Is it absolutely necessary for marketers to know how quickly and to exactly what degree each portion of your brain responds to their campaigns? NeuroFocus seems to think so.

The company is announcing the “world’s first wireless full-brain EEG measurement headset,” dubbed the Mynd. The brain cap’s appearance alone is enough to send a conspiracy theorist running to fashion a new aluminum foil helmet. But their intentions really do cause for concern.

For the first time, market researchers will be able to capture the highest quality data on consumers’ deep subconscious responses in real time wirelessly, revolutionizing mobile in-store market research and media consumption at home.

By gaining mobility without sacrificing medical-grade technology, the lightweight, sleekly-designed Mynd opens up new testing environments to consumers beyond the lab, such as the home, outdoor venues, movie theaters, shopping malls, and auditoriums with data being streamed to platforms, including the iPad, iPhone and other smart devices.

“While developing Mynd, we focused on achieving medical-grade scientific precision along with extraordinary ease of use and aesthetics. This neuromarketing breakthrough provides new opportunities for our clients to gain critical knowledge and insights into how consumers perceive their brands, products, packaging, in-store marketing, and advertising at the deep subconscious level in real time,” said Dr. A. K. Pradeep, Chief Executive Officer of NeuroFocus.

That’s right. This medical-grade mobile brain scanning hat will stream our consumer perceptions into a salesman or analyst’s smartphone, where it will be used to further hone the advertising machine that already demands our attention everywhere we go.

On the other hand, the European Tools for Brain-Computer Interaction consortium (TOBI) has asked to use the Mynd as the core platform in an attempt to develop practical technologies to improve the quality of life for people with neurological disabilities.

It’s not exactly the intended use, but NeuroFocus seems pretty pleased with themselves that somebody thought of an actually beneficial application of their thinky-chapeau.

What do you think? Does something seem a bit unethical about the whole “in-store brain scans for marketing” thing? Let us know in the comments section.

The post NeuroFocus Pushes Advertisers From Brainstorming to Brain Scanning appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

AutoNOMOS Labs in Germany have developed a system that allows someone to drive a car using their mind. The system uses censors to measure the brain’s electromagnetic signals. The measurements are interpreted as patterns by a computer. The driver puts on a sensor cap and trains the computer to recognize their brain patterns. The computer software learns to associate two different brain patterns with left or right directions. And voilà, brain control.

Once the driver has got a sensor cap on, they are able to give commands to an autonomous car. The car has video cameras, radars and laser sensors that give the car a 360 degree view of its surroundings. The car is able to drive itself to the end of an intersection, and then the driver can command the car to turn left or right – with their brain.

The researchers were able to teach the computer to recognize four brain patterns – right, left, accelerate or decelerate. There was a small delay between the brain commands and the steering action, which would of course compromise split-second decisions required by the driver in a dangerous situation. Plus, what happens when those disjointed thoughts in your head inadvertently cause the car to listen to you?

The researchers caution that there is a long way to go before we are able to command cars with out brains. They were also testing the car in a large, open area without distractions like drivers who cut you off, and cause you to think something not so nice that your car might take literally.

[via iEEE, CNN]

The post German Researchers Use Mind Control To Drive Car appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Mind control has taken a new twist today with XWave, a NeuroSky eSense patented technology that allows you to “see your mind in action.” What this means is, well, you can take control of things by the electrical impulses transmitted through your skull to the surface of your forehead. These signals are analog, which are converted into digital by XWave, so as your mind wanders and sends out signals, you are able to control things.

Yes, its mind control. Just in another form you probably never imagined. The technology can be used to light up the living room, change colors of lights, or even control a game. The company is giving access to their API so developers can make their own mind-controlled apps, which is a scary thing. This is the first step into a whole lot of weirdness. The image from the company looks as though you can control your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad simply by thinking. A mind controlled iPod is one thing, but how about mind-controlling your truck remotely over a wireless interface? This could lead us into some seriously questionable situations, but hey, atlas the PLX XWave headset HAS to be on us to work. What kind of mind-control app or device would you like?

[PLX via Gizmodo]

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