Talk about Technology

Jun 14, 2015 at 2:50 AM
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See some interesting product or technology that's captured your interest? Talk about it here!

Human interface devices, voice recognition, eye-tracking, face-detection, and EEG mind control!
Topic inside!
Some background before I begin:

Last month I ordered a Kone XTD max customization laser gaming mouse (and a Corsair Gaming MM600 Double-Sided Aluminum Core Gaming Mouse Mat), since I use the desktop so often. Was hoping to move up from a basic throw-a-way mouse and ancient plastic rectangle moon picture mousepad to a life of luxury :]
f24cb692-eac5-4077-9a59-43f8bc49eab5.jpg

The good news is that, it is an amazing combination of equipment. The mouse glides like ice on the smoother side of the pad, and the actual mouse material *feels* something like mouse leather. And those crazy lights that are all the rage can be customized to a soothing violet blu-ray pulse. I *really* liked the thing.
Except, the bad news. It costs and arm and a leg... or actually just my arm. My palm / arm started bothering me just after a few days after I started using it. Not sure if it was just the tip of the iceberg, since I've injured the arm in the past, but the timing seems like switching to a new large mouse from the small HP two button just wasn't the right move for me. (I used to have an intellimouse explorer ages ago that was comparable in size... but...) Well, choosing mice seems more complicated than, what's the best one. There's claw, palm, and finger-tip grip styles for instance. And I switch between palm and claw. Apparently it's really best to try out different mice in person, and better yet demo mice that you might think fit you well, to see how comfortable it is in the long term. We can buy shoes online, and hope for the best... and the same principle goes for the mouse. One-size does not (comfortably) fit all.
Anyway, fortunately I was able to return it within 30 days (Amazon!), and get a refund minus shipping cost.

And so, today's tech discussion really begins here. Human input devices. I've since looked at alternative and ergonomic mice, pedals, voice recognition, eye-tracking, face-tracking and even actual EEG brain tracking devices! While a normal mouse is currently great for most users (minus the fact that they come in all shapes and sizes), when you use a PC as much as I do you might want to find ways to improve your experience, your workflow, and protect your body from repetitive-use; or just for fun!

Where I started: Voice recognition (real examples):
I.e. Enter room. Collapse on bed, eyes closed. Say, "Start Winamp". "Shuffle". "Volume Down". "Next". Grin as music plays. Or, dictate an essay as you sit outside through the phone to your PC*.
I.e. Say, "Start Cave Story". Cave Story Forums pop-up. "Down". "Down". "Find Satellite Lounge and Go". Browser searches for the first entry, and opens that link.

I have access to Dragon Naturally Speaking and a good microphone with a general compression filter on it, so I can be anywhere in the room and have the PC hear me and respond. I actually remember using Dragon for fun years and years ago! They've come a long ways... And thanks to the internet community it suddenly is a lot more powerful than ever before. People have created Natlink, Vocola, Unimacro, Dragonfly; software to connect Dragon to Python and different libraries, and anything you can imagine and say, you can assign actions or scripts.

Learning about voice recognition brought me to an aside topic... Text-to-speech.
Check out this link, they've come a long ways from Microsoft Sam.
http://www.acapela-group.com/ (Try typing in some stuff there and testing out a few voices! They say whatever you type... keep it clean... :p)

After I looked into voice recognition, I was interested in having the PC actually respond back! For instance:
I.e. I'm currently focused on something. I say, "What time is it?". Computer says : "The time is six o' four PM."
I.e. I load up a digital textbook I have to read... I say, "Start reading". And bam, I can keep myself focused with a good voice helping me along when I need it.

And then just yesterday I looked at my first Chatbot script. Customizable bots you can script to respond to input (or so it seems.) So, add voice recognition into the mix, and maybe I can setup a simple computer monitor with personality :] The bot I found uses Rivescript. Just starting to play with it. If I got really into it, I could add an avatar and hook it up so it will actually go through the motions of talking. I've seen that... Add in OpenCL for face detection and/or recognition with a webcam... I could have the computer blank the screen when I'm not there!
Was watching an anime, Strike the Blood...
p203233-1-mogwai.jpg

He was a nice bot :]
"Mogwai, what's the answer to ..."
One issue though with TTS, voice recognition tries to listen to the TTS. So, I can make it talk to itself with different voices lol. But it becomes quite troubling when it starts to injects all the dialogue it says into what you are doing. Might have to make the audio recording switch to zero input while there is TTS activity as a simple fix...

Oh, and since I mentioned face detection:
http://kinesicmouse.xcessity.at/
With that software, if you have a X-Box One Kinect One, you can bind actions to facial gestures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjhrR4YQtRE
Hands-free gameplay in a FPS! I love it xD ...Unfortunately the price I don't love: $400 (not including kinect and windows cable). But, the target audience are those who NEED it currently... Not, someone like me who would just like to add an extra sensory input.

...I can see online games coming where all your facial actions are read and displayed in-game! That'll be quite epic. And already seems to be implementable already... If not for the hardware price. Actually, I haven't been keeping up with the latest consoles... wonder if they've already done something like that, in a non-gimmicy way.
I was actually considering getting a kinect to try this, since it apparently also serves as a 3D scanner!!! But, sadly apparently it only does well with a macro level. Don't expect any detail of smaller objects.

Oh and I believe that video above uses eye-tracking to aim**. Which leads me to Tobii EyeX and the SteelSeries Eye Sentry!
Back to Dragon and voice recognition software. Using voice commands to navigate works decently. You can even "Mouse Grid" or specify coordinates to place the mouse on the screen or move it by voice. But, it is horribly inefficient, even if you have a location perfect memory for coordinates. However, with eye-tracking, you can simply look on the screen and have the mouse warp to the position you look. Now, I like the sound of that.

Currently the SteelSentry consumer eye tracking device is being described as a kind of gaming statistics device, and an immersion enhancing device (poorly natively supported currently). I.e. one supported game allows you to look around with just your eyes. And as for statistics... Well, originally this technology is BIG BUCKS (1k - 30k) for research purposes. Like, where do the eyes go when you look at this advertisement. How long do your eyes look at this, or that. Well, this $100-$200 device is being used to let gamers analyze their gameplay or show streams where you see what the player is monitoring exactly. Pretty nifty. But, thanks to the EyeX SDK, you can do things like this:
http://iris.xcessity.at/
Same guy as that kinect mouse project. Still pretty expensive... But, it allows you to define vision hotspots. When your vision looks at a spot on the screen, you can have an action occur. Think about it... Maybe have 6 minimized or shrunken windows; three on the left and three on the right, top to bottom. When you look at one of them for a pre-determined amount of time, it could shrink your current main window and switch it out with that one for your main. I don't know the best way to do it, but just imagine the customization :] Or for example, playing a game where you have a mini-map on the corner. When you focus on that map, have it increase in size, until you look away.
Oh, and I liked a random youtuber comment: Imagine NPCs reacting to where you are staring. Fun times ahead. lol


...This has gotten way longer than I meant, but let me skip to one more interesting device, ignoring the ergonomic stuff for now.

EEG or electroencephalography input devices. Like the Emotiv EPOC or what I have my eye on... the Insight. Basically, it reads certain brain activity, allowing you to map brain actions as yet another input device.
Think forward... you move forward. Think up... you move up... Are you bored? Are you interested? It Knows. Now, imagine adding THAT functionality to a RPG. The AI can tell you are bored or interested and comments on it. lol. Magic performed not with a key press, but with the mind. Love the sound of that. YES.
https://emotiv.com/insight.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJBB5rxs-8E
Interview and demo

I'd say this tech is still in consumer infancy, but because it's becoming affordable... Well, good things are hopefully coming to our future. ...No Sword Art Online side effects though please ;D
 
Jun 14, 2015 at 8:25 AM
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Personally EEG input sounds good in a VR sense, but not in anything else. False positives will be rife. You know how hard it is to not think about something, now imagine that your computer is acting upon that. Now imagine how it handles the subconscious. Chaos will ensue.

Not only that, but EEG input can only either issue commands that your computer can barely understand, or force you to think in a way that your computer does understand. The only solution for this is to build a specialized OS, or limit functionality to programs that directly support it. Neither is ideal.

However VR is the perfect application for this sort of tech.
 
Jun 15, 2015 at 3:02 AM
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WOAH wall of text. I'll read this later.
 
Jun 15, 2015 at 9:55 PM
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Personally EEG input sounds good in a VR sense, but not in anything else. False positives will be rife. You know how hard it is to not think about something, now imagine that your computer is acting upon that. Now imagine how it handles the subconscious. Chaos will ensue.

Not only that, but EEG input can only either issue commands that your computer can barely understand, or force you to think in a way that your computer does understand. The only solution for this is to build a specialized OS, or limit functionality to programs that directly support it. Neither is ideal.

However VR is the perfect application for this sort of tech.
I don't know, from what I've seen in videos; you are able to teach the computer the way you think with simple reproducable commands, and I think we just need practice. I want to believe we're not so erratic that we can't keep up simple commands without things flying out of control internally. (then again, looking at some people trying to control remote control helicopters using similar EEG devices looked like it needed work...)

btw here's a list of the detectable patterns with the Insight:
(besides emotional states, it looks like most are "easy" non-abstract motor command thoughts.)
Facial expressions:

Blink
Left wink
Right wink
Furrow (frown)
Raise brow (surprise)
Smile
Clench teeth (grimace)

Emotional States:

Instantaneous excitement
Long term excitement
Stress
Engagement
Relaxation
Interest
Focus

Mental commands:

Neutral

Any of up to 4 pretrained items from a list of 15 labels:
Push
Pull
Lift
Drop
Left
Right
Rotate clockwise
Rotate anticlockwise
Rotate forwards
Rotate backwards
Rotate left
Rotate right
Disappear
User-definable, animations provided for above set
I want to get my hands on one of these and see for myself, just how practical it might be :] But it won't be out till the fall I imagine... (And I bought the eye-tracking Sentry instead! I'll have 14 days to demo it, before I have to make a commitment.)

I'm hoping someday, we'll be able to use mind control like modern trainable voice recognition. But you don't want commands to be arbitrarily executed by thought; more like a specific confirmation mental command should be issued before and after the wanted command should be executed.

btw, What did you mean by a specialized OS though? I'm curious :]
And just to clarify, what do you mean exactly when you say Virtual Reality would be perfect for this? You mean motor control?


@SuperJaws - Sorry :] I was looking at this tech and got hype. I DID try to make it slightly readable, by breaking it up and adding larger sized subject lines (and some LINKS!). EDIT: and put it inside spoiler tags, to reduce scrolling time, and add shock value, to encourage other people to talk about other tech too.
 
Jun 16, 2015 at 12:51 AM
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X-Calibar said:
I don't know, from what I've seen in videos; you are able to teach the computer the way you think with simple reproducable commands, and I think we just need practice. I want to believe we're not so erratic that we can't keep up simple commands without things flying out of control internally. (then again, looking at some people trying to control remote control helicopters using similar EEG devices looked like it needed work...)
As I said this requires the user to change how he thinks.

The Windows OS accepts two user input types universally, the keyboard and the mouse. All other user input types are supported on a program by program basis (gamepads for instance). This means that in order to do more than super basic actions you need to either write a program that supports it and have it only work effectively for that program.

X-Calibar said:
btw, What did you mean by a specialized OS though? I'm curious :]
An OS built from the ground up to accept EEG as the primary input. It would also need to see itself as the user sees it in order to accept commands effectively. Though this will never happen.

X-Calibar said:
And just to clarify, what do you mean exactly when you say Virtual Reality would be perfect for this? You mean motor control?
Exactly.
 
Jun 25, 2015 at 12:56 PM
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I got the Sentry Gaming Eye Tracker, it's pretty awesome. Rather than a replacement for a mouse though, it works best WITH the mouse imo. I'm faster navigating the PC with it now :] I might post a video of it in action sometime later.

https://www.leapmotion.com/
In other news, the Leap motion sensor/controller has been out for a while now. With consumer VR devices coming out next year, I hope support for stuff like this will really pick up. HANDSS!
This would be brilliant with Surgeon Simulator...

p203238-0-7847c540893180d235ba567c4079b39fdf26455f82ab.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz-_Mixlyxs
 
Jul 15, 2015 at 4:53 AM
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Seems like an alright place to bring up a potentially useful topic. Hard drive failures have long been a scourge on PC users, and while I've managed to avoid them myself, I know of more than a couple of members here who haven't been so lucky. I figure that in this day and age, those who have external storage to spare should be able to use simpler and more reliable methods than copying individual files over, especially for every little change they make on a day-to-day basis. As such, I went looking into (free) disc-image-backup software. Personally I've been using this one for its simple and effective design, but there are quite a few options out there now. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't already IMO.
 
Jul 15, 2015 at 5:40 AM
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Oof, I wanted to reply to this thread a while ago >.>

There's lots of interesting things discussed here to take note of, but for now I'll just mention that backup software isn't something I've looked into - and I honestly don't know why! I don't spend a ton of time on my laptop, but it would still hurt quite a bit to lose what I have on it. I'll give your recommendation a try tomorrow, DT. ^_^

E:You were definitely right in saying that it's simple to use. Looks like I'll be using this for a while yet, it's really important to keep things safe :debug:
 
Jul 16, 2015 at 9:45 PM
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@Backups - Dad just lost a couple week's worth of programming due to a program update/uninstallation going obnoxious and eating up all non-application files within its structure ;-; System restore and undelete programs were of no help from the looks of it. Too bad I don't know anything about data forensics... Now I'm thinking about setting up a differential backup. Will look at that recommendation DT, thanks :]

It's too easy to lose digital information... I used to write everything to disc, but these days I'd need to be using blu-rays... and I don't have a drive for that :/

Btw anyone looked at virtual reality yet? I'm getting hyped.
 
Sep 16, 2015 at 6:35 AM
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Here's something interesting...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1152958674/the-sensel-morph-interaction-evolved/

"The first pressure-sensitive, multi-touch input device that enables users to interact with the digital world like never before."

It's like a large track pad, except instead of looking for a single point of contact, it captures the pressure and shape(s) on the pad.
They show an example of using an artist's paintbrush to generate that shape on a program (Corel Draw maybe?). With hopefully greater support down the road.
You could do a lot with this technology, but without a way to track where you are hovering... sounds kinda awkward.

Now if they could just combine it with something like a 3d depth sensor, to allow for hovering with any object...
btw... 250$. Not cheap! But, could be competitive against Wacom pen stuff if it works well...
 
Sep 16, 2015 at 11:01 AM
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My current mouse is ancient at 7 years now. All the rubber-ish parts (Side grip, on scroll wheel) have fallen off, the plastic has been worned down to a shiny surface, but most annoyingly the left clicker has just about broke >~<

I've been looking towards getting a new mouse, but the problem is is that I'm a fingertip grip user. There are almost no computer mouses that would fit me nicely like my current old mouse and also have at least *1* macro button :<
Even more so, replacememts for the mouse charge at $80, and any other decent small fingertip grip mouses cost upwards of a $100...


Also I'm wondering, the eye-tracker you got, how accurate is it? It does sound like a new thing I can tack on to my desktop ^^
(I'm gonna give VR a bit more time to mature)
 
Sep 16, 2015 at 5:22 PM
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All this technology is still in its infancy. The only "futuristic" technology that has a chance to gain mainstream ground (within the next 10 years) is VR. I'm excited for everything else here, but it isnt ready. Within 50ish years, I think the stuff you have listed will be mainstream, as it takes time to lessen the price and improve the technology for the masses. VR on the other hand is extremely hyped (for a good reason) and I'm sure that the Oculus/HTC valve thingy/PS VR will sell millions by the end of the decade.
 
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