BBC Experiment: Switch Channels With Your Mind

Feeling lazy and the TV remote is more than a hand’s distance! Feels like coming out of science fiction, this new technology seems to be the next best thing for the couch potatoes and television watchers in general.

The broadcasting giant BBC is working with the London-based tech company This Place and has tested its new ‘Mind Control TV’ prototype. The prototype is a brainwave reading headset and works with BBC’s i player service. Cyrus Saihan, head of business development for the BBC’s Digital division revealed on BBC news:

It’s an internal prototype designed to give our program makers, technologists and other users an idea of how this technology might be used in future.

In the experiment, 10 BBC staff members wore the headset and tried launching the i player and then switch channels with their mind power. Some with the focused minds were able to do it easily as compared to others but everyone did it eventually.

The device works by measuring the electrical activity inside the brain, when the user focuses its attention on a specific channel. The thought interface which is developed by This Place, cycles through each program or channel until the user selects an item based on calibrated brainwaves. The selected program will play automatically until the user focuses to go back to the discovery interface.

Basically, this technology would work when your mind is free of chaos. Russell Plunkett, the innovations director at This Place, said:

To do this, I am going to meditate by closing my eyes and focusing on deep breaths.

Saihan said that the technology is still in its development phase and upgrading this tech would open new dimensions and create entirely different ways of human communication with the machines. Also this technology could be integrated with various electronic and mechanical systems to create better and futuristic gadgets.

Getting the work done just by focusing the thoughts would greatly help people with motor neuron diseases and physical disabilities.

The cost has not been revealed yet, but whenever be this technology available it would definitely get its takers in the market, won’t matter what the price is.

Going by the speed at which the technology is being enhanced, the future, it looks like is definitely going to be a science fiction!!

But for now forget fighting over the remote now with your big brother; just focus! :D

Via: Phys.org