MindRDR lets you control Google Glass with your thoughts

Up until now, you can only navigate Google Glass by touching or talking to it, but London-based firm This Place just made it possible to control the device using something else: your brainwaves. The company just released an open source application called MindRDR that gives you something akin to very, very limited telekinetic abilities, so long as you have both Google Glass and Neurosky’s EEG biosensor headset. See, MindRDR serves as the bridge that connects the two, translating the brain activity from the EEG biosensor into executable commands for the high-tech eyewear. At the moment, the software can only take pictures and upload them to either Facebook or Twitter, but This Place released the app for free on GitHub in hopes that other developers will use it for more advanced projects.

Google Glass has made a name for itself (somewhat infamously) as head-mounted hardware that you can control with your voice and a sliding finger. Now, a team based out of interactive studio This Place in London, is launching a new app that it hopes will kickstart an even more seamless way of interacting with the device: with the power of your mind. MindRDR, as the app is called, links up Google Glass with another piece of head-mounted hardware, the Neurosky EEG biosensor, to create a communication loop. The Neurosky biosensor picks up on brainwaves that correlate to your ability to focus. The app then translates these brainwaves into a meter reading that gets superimposed on the camera view in Google Glass. As you “focus” more with your mind, the meter goes up, and the app takes a photograph of what you are seeing in front of you. Focus some more, and the meter goes up again and the photo gets posted to Twitter. It’s an early, and somewhat primitive vision of how your mind can control Glass. Yes, there are devices out there that have even more sensors on them, although that can start to get very expensive (the Neurosky retails for £71 in the UK, while Google Glass costs £1,000 and the app is free). And to be honest, the current hook-up is pretty primitive, too. When I arrived for a demonstration earlier today, one of This Place’s account managers was cooling Glass down under the air conditioner.