At SBHacks IV, my teammate and I decided to work on the concept of controlling a game with your brainwaves.
We haven’t really seen the concept being executed ever before, so we decided to take a crack at it - it was too exciting a prospect not to!
[Procedure]
Using the Muse EEG headset API, I was able to constantly scrape data on brainwaves Alpha through Gamma. However, each brainwave corresponded to different thought patterns and brain functions - meaning it’s too difficult to make intentional game actions without isolating a specific brain function.
After doing some deep digging through psychological journals, I decided that isolating the Gamma brainwave would give us the easiest means of control - as it’s mainly linked to stress. However, the data was coming in really quickly and we needed a way to manage the stream of data in a way that a player can control.
We decided to average the Gamma readings over a period of half a second, and if it averaged closer to 0 (not stressed) the character would lift off and fly. If the readings averaged closer to 1 the character would drop to the ground.
The big unforeseen challenge was figuring out how to connect the Muse API endpoint with Unity. The documentation for Muse was absolutely terrible, and we spent way too much time just making the technology work. When we finally connected it, I created a brief test world using sample assets and the project worked surprisingly well!
[Aftermath]
Users were delighted to tinker with our project, and some were a lot better than others (as expected). Mindfulness and being able to control your thought patterns is a skill I was focusing with this project, and it surpassed my expectations with flying colors. We ended up placing as finalists that year after having a hilarious last minute demo.