Look Out For Mario! No, Seriously, Look Out, Or You’re Dead

Waterloo Labs, a team of engineers at National Instruments Corp in Oregon, have unveiled the source code for their pet project ‘EyeMario’, which is more or less what you may guess on your second or third try – Mario Bros, as controlled by your eyes.

It’s a really cool concept: electrodes hooked up to the user’s face measure the polarity of his or her freaking eyes and the relative position of them within their sockets to deduce what the user is looking at in-game. The result looks… well, suffice it to say that the on-screen action looks about as adept as my mother’s Mario skill. But that doesn’t stop it from being cool.

So EyeMario isn’t exactly the most pinpointedly-accurate control scheme you’ve ever seen, and hardcore gamers would likely treat it the same way they treated the Wii Wheel for Mario Kart – by leaving it the hell on Gamestop’s shelf. But that’s not the point. The point is that this is merely a proof of concept; the technology is also being adapted to treat people with lazy eye, and to allow those who have lost the use of their hands to continue using computers.

You’re already watching the video, so I’ll just leave you to it. Imagine 10 years down the road, when some kid is screaming racial slurs at you over Xbox Live while fragging you to bits with his eyes.

How embarrassing.