In a development that will allow even physically disabled people become a gamer, British researchers claim to have developed a revolutionary and affordable computer game which could be played with the blink of an eye. ‘Pong’ is an open source adaptation created by the researchers at the Imperial College London where a player can move a bat to hit a ball as it bounces around the screen using their eye. To play the game, the user wears special glasses containing an infrared light a webcam that records the movement of one eye. The webcam is linked to a laptop where a software syncs the player’s eye movements to the game, Journal Science said.
Dr Aldo Faisal, the team’s supervisor from the Department of Computing and the Department of Bioengineering, said, “Remarkably, our team have created this piece of neurotechnology using bits of kit that you can buy in a shop, such as webcams.” The game that they have developed is quite simple, but we think it has enormous potential, particularly because it does not need lots of expensive equipment. The teams said that the prototype game is very simple but the technology behind it could be adapted to create more sophisticated games and applications such as wheelchairs and computer cursors controlled by eye movements.
They said, one of the major benefits of the new technology is that it is inexpensive, using off-the-shelf hardware and costing approximately 25 pound to make, while eye movement systems that are currently used to study the brain and eye motion cost around 27,000 pounds. “We hope to eventually make the technology available online so anyone can have a go at creating new applications and games with it and we are optimistic about where this might lead,” Faisal said.