Google Glass App Allows People To Hack Glasses With Brainwave Activity
For some time now, we have been reporting on the Google Glass. For some, it is a brand new piece of tech that is exciting, as proven when elders checked it out. To others, it is a tool that will end privacy thanks to everyone else. Because of the latter, some restaurants have banned the new tech in their places. As a matter of fact, some wearers were beat up over Google Glass.
Now reports are coming in from all the tech junkie sites about a brand new app that could be installed on Google Glass that will do something that comes out of sci-fi films: control the glasses with your mind.
In an initial report by BBC, Google Glass can now be hacked thanks to a new app called the MindRDR. That, along with an electroencephalography, or EEG headset, will allow users to take a picture without moving a muscle. The new tech add-on was made by London-based start-up known as This Place. The tech could be utilized in high-pressure, hands-free situations, such as surgery for example.
On the other hand, Google did not support the app because of its association to “read minds.” As a matter of fact, a spokesperson told BBC the following about the new application:
“Google Glass cannot read your mind. This particular application seems to work through a separate piece of kit which you attack to Glass. We have not reviewed, no approved, the app so it won’t be available in the Glass app store.”
Some more insights were mentioned in a follow-up article by World Bulletin.First came from Dusan Hamlin, the chief executive of This Place, in which he stated:
“We wanted to realize the true potential of Glass by allowing users to control it with their minds. Currently, users either have to touch it or use voice commands, which are restrictive for some social situations and for users with disabilities.”
Despite the negative connotation of what the spokesperson for Google Glass said, it seems that the people behind Google Glass do show some interest in the new hands-free and voice-free attachment and app. The spokesperson actually said:
“Of course we are always interested in hearing about new applications of Glass and we’ve already seen some great research from a variety of medical fields from surgery to Parkinson’s.”
In conclusion, the people behind MindRDR and the attachment hope the tech/app duo could, in the future, give sufferers of illness like locked-in syndrome, severe multiple sclerosis, or quadriplegia a chance to interact with the world through technology.
