MindRDR: the first Google Glass app controlled by your brainwaves

Home / News / MindRDR: the first Google Glass app controlled by your brainwaves

There are already lots of interesting apps for Google Glass, but MindRDR might be the most technologically impressive – because it allows you to control the wearable not by touch or voice, but by brainwaves.

Yes, this app enables the user to communicate with their Glass merely through thought. In order to do that, it requires the Glass wearer to put another piece of tech on his or her head: the Neurosky EEG biosensor (priced at around £70), which measures brainwaves.

Psychic photography

Concentrate hard enough and the photo will be taken

Currently, MindRDR allows the user to take a photo through Glass then share it to Twitter or Facebook, all through mere thought. In order to take the shot, the wearer must concentrate until a horizontal line moves to the top of Glass’ display. After the photo has been captured, the user must again concentrate to move the line to the top of the screen in order to share it. To discard the image and start again, the user can simply relax and the line will drop to the bottom of the display.

At present, these actions are the limit of MindRDR’s capabilities, but Chloe Kirton, creative director at the app’s London-based developer This Place, says there’s much more to come: “The possibilities of Google Glass telekinesis are vast. In the future, MindRDR could give those with conditions like locked-in syndrome, severe multiple sclerosis or quadriplegia the opportunity to interact with the wider world through wearable technology.” Little wonder, then, that This Place is already in conversations with Professor Stephen Hawking about the future of its app.

The Neurosky EEG sensor is required, and costs around £70

MindRDR is available from today for free, and it’s open source which means developers can get hold of the code to tweak as they see fit. So you can expect more telekinesis apps using MindRDR’s tech to land on Glass in the near future.

[Via MindRDR]

READ MORE: Google Glass preview

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Tech journalism's answer to The Littlest Hobo, I've written for a host of titles and lived in three different countries in my 15 years-plus as a freelancer. But I've always come back home to Stuff eventually, where I specialise in writing about cameras, streaming services and being tragically addicted to Destiny.