How Long Until We Could Make A Real Sword Art Online (sao) Nerve Gear Type Device

[AuraNightheart]

So I think what I've mostly gathered up from the posts on this thread and others (like the ones you linked me too) is that it will require multiple different types of technologies to create a FullDive device or something similar to it.

 

The nanoscopic electrodes are a good idea, because they could easily get in without the user probably even noticing, and then leave again after they choose to "log out." They would be so small that even one drop of blood would be unlikely to come out (visible to our eyes at normal sight, at least. Not near enough to effect human function). Developing that technology would be very difficult, though.

 

EDIT: It would also be interesting if in the next few years we researched how to possibly create brainwaves and neurons using technology so we don't have to end up using the electrodes, as some people might find them "invasive" and therefore not want to use the technology.

Edited March 25, 2015 by AuraNightheart

[AuraNightheart]

As a second thought, before we begin writing into the brain's neurons and waves, it might be wise to just design a basic human avatar interface that can react based on brainwaves first. Writing into the brainwaves can be second, because if we just use a virtual avatar that has the same movement capabilities of an average human and just responds to brainwaves on a screen in front of the user, it is possible that we could figure out exactly where all the nerves would be needed to be written into for certain actions, such as smell.

 

I might end up making a separate thread for the physics of Virtual Reality, since they would have to mirror real life in many ways (such as for Gravity and body movement. In most video games you can't move every part of your character).

[CraigD]

EDIT: It would also be interesting if in the next few years we researched how to possibly create brainwaves and neurons using technology so we don't have to end up using the electrodes, as some people might find them "invasive" and therefore not want to use the technology.

So I think what I've mostly gathered up from the posts on this thread and others (like the ones you linked me too) is that it will require multiple different types of technologies to create a FullDive device or something similar to it.

This problem with using "brainwaves” for computer-brain interfaces is that, just in the way an ocean wave is only a low-resolution, non-unique (two entirely different causes can result in practically identical ocean) result of their many causes – wind, current, the ocean floor – “brainwaves” can’t tell us what individual or small collections of brain cells are actually doing. They can’t be used to “write” to the bain at all.

 

“Brainwave” is a common term for EEG readings with wavelike appearances. They’ve useful, because they can be fairly easily used to tell very general things about brains, such as whether their awake or asleep, relaxed or active, healthy, injured, or dead. They’ve been used successfully for many years in crude CBIs, including inexpensive toys like Mattell’s “Mindflex” game and more expensiv, higher-quality devices like Emotive’s EPOC (discussed more in this post). They’re promising, and have had some prototype successes, in more important applications, such as allowing disabled people to control computers and machines. Famous physicist Steven Hawking may need to rely on such a system in the near future, to avoid locked-in syndrome.

 

EEG-based control CBIs, however, don’t work by detecting brain activity normally associated with an real-world thought or action to be represented in a computer simulation, but by detecting sufficiently distinct and recognizable states of large of neurons (the toys call the subjective mental state necessary for them to be controlled as this “will” or “using the force”), or in some cases, facial and scalp muscles (The EPOC, for example, can in detect facial expressions). The user must learn to produce such a state, which can then be used to trigger a game action (for example, in a video game often packaged with the EPOC, triggering the character using magic spells or telekinesis). This is very different and much less natural that the practically perfect, fine resolution control shown in SOA.

 

 

Though researchers are improving the ability to isolate signals from smaller and more specific collections of brain cells in the “noisy” using large arrays of EEG electrodes and better software, there is likely a limit to how much improvement such “signal over noise” processing technology can accomplish.

 

In short, EEGs and the “brainwave” interpretation of their signals is, I think, a dead end/no starter technology for achieving a device like the NerveGear.

 

I might end up making a separate thread for the physics of Virtual Reality, since they would have to mirror real life in many ways (such as for Gravity and body movement. In most video games you can't move every part of your character).

Good idea! :thumbs_up

The physics of a VR simulation isn’t, I think significantly different from that of any realistic 3 dimensional real-time video game, which is a fairly mature technology on present day PC and video game console hardware. The history of such software is closely tied to the specialized hardware on which it’s typically implemented, which at present is usually a GPU.

 

Considering the use of realistic physics simulation in video games, leads to some deep design issues and observations, a major one being that video game players don’t necessarily want their game physics to be realistic in all areas. Very realistic simulations in games are often frustrating and unpleasant for players, because they make the game as or more difficult than performing similar actions in the real world. Activities in games can be more enjoyable than their IRW equivalents, because they are tweaked to be easier to perceive or perform.

[BigSchwart]

hey all

I'm new to this and I've only done a bit of research on VR technology. But here's what I've found so far, appreciate feedback, corrections, pointers etc and if this helps at all then awesome :D

 

alright, so assuming we use an EEG to "collect the brainwaves" so to speak, what if all the electrodes were centered around the Primary Motor Cortex of the brain? because that's where the signals to move the body are generated and that's really all we would need. Not the entire brain, just the body movements. So here's what I'm thinking: if the electrodes were along the M1, then would we be able to tell which body part is being moved from which area of the M1 is being activated? and if so would we be able to tell the strength of the movement from the strength of the signal? this might be completely wrong, not sure.

 

Now, assuming we collect data of sufficient quality and are able to interpret it with a program (BCI) then how would we stop the signals from reaching the body? I believe they would need to be stopped before they leave the M1 so as to not interfere with signals to the heart, lungs etc. OR that we would need to put the subject's body into a deep sleep-like state but keep the brain active. Is this possible?

 

And finally, how would we simulate the VR senses? I think we would have to write directly to the sections of the brain that control the various senses. But I don't know how to do this nor if it is even possible to the degree of precision required with today's technology.

 

As an extra thing, I believe that for the gamer perspective the system would have to be entirely non-invasive, for medical use the case may be different but for gamers... non invasive.

 

So that's my thoughts, correct me if I'm wrong (which is entirely possible, the above is the product of only a few hours research on the internet) I am planning to pursue this from an IT perspective at University next year so input from anyone out there with a background in the other elements required would be greatly appeciated

 

Also, to CraigD: if not an EEG then what would you use? from my limited knowledge it wouldn't be a good idea to subject the human brain to radiation like that of an MRI or fMRI for extended periods of time. And let's face it, some gamers play for hours on end, my personal record is 10 hours straight

Edited April 9, 2015 by BigSchwart

[nullspaceM]

I'm also interested in VR technology in both its current state and it's possible future state.
While I don't have anything to contribute that hasn't been said already, I'd like to recommend some reading material for all of you interested in reading and writing to the brain.
Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" book goes into detail about all sorts of stuff you all have been talking about, including experiments into mind reading and manipulations that have been attempted.

Amazon Link for the interested: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Future-Mind-Scientific-Understand/dp/038553082X

I'm going to be honest, the brain is the most complicated "Computer" on the planet, and there are 7 billion of them all working slightly differently. Getting full-dive tech to work as it does in SAO is an extrodinarily difficult task, explaining why we still have much to learn about the brain following years of research. I don't mean to discourage however. This will be the year we will find out if VR really takes off. If it does, there is going to be a larger push towards more and more immersion. So keep the dream alive but at the same time don't dismiss current VR tech as primitive: it needs to start from somewhere.

Or maybe I'm wrong and it will someone that posted in this forum that will make the breakthrough. I look forward to that day! :)

Edited April 9, 2015 by nullspaceM

[bmrme]

First introduction.

 

Hi, my name is Bradley i am 14 and in my 9th year of UK school i am top of my class well all but English and am a amazing researcher i am also good at solving problems and when i saw this post it took me a while but i did a bit of researching read all of the comments and came up with this.

 

To move our body we rely on our nerves to send electrical impulses to our mussels, they our also not connected near the end of there journey so what if unlike in SAO or any other anime/film were they just use a head gear what if we use a full body suit to detect electrical signals in certain areas corresponding to our desired movement point this of course only is the transmitting and a chunk of code would be needed to make sense the signals this of course will not stop the body from moving currently i am trying to learn how we could stop this at certain points also i forgot to check if this is still going if it is then yay if not then get out of bed and start working.

[webman128]

Neuroscientists found out how to inhibit muscle contractions in a rat using optogenetics.

 

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/278901.php

 

So it can't be that far away until it could be possible for humans. Just putting it out there.

[AuraNightheart]

The article looks interesting, but we have to consider how far humans would actually be willing to go just to be able to use something like this for maybe thirty minutes to an hour on weekdays (especially for students who might have to do homework). It'd be a lot of effort for something you get so little time to use.

 

However, the article was quite interesting and I have no doubt it will probably be able to be applied in the future to similar medical science. The only issue from there is mapping more of the human neurons (which will take time) since rats' brains aren't as complicated

[Darkrepulser]

Hi everyone, sorry to be such a bother but just thought before I begin attempting to make an input to an already content-filled thread I'd just give a little introduction since I'm being so intrusive.

 

I'm jarred, a 16 year old student from Australia with an extended interest in software designing/Developing UI and witnessing the multitude of ideas being bounced off each other in a well informed discussion I became quite intrigued (deducing the fact that Sao is like a component of my very being) and wanted to ask I could possible assist in gathering knowledge?

 

Anyway, so according to my observation of the prior comments made a really oversimplified explanation of the information gathered includes; differing methods of reading brain waves, writing back signals to the brain upon interpretation and some elaboration on ways to prevent brain signals reaching muscles from nerve endings. I think that if the first full dive system were to be developed, I'd suggest that the focal point should be the reading and writing in a device or suit of brain waves (I'm aware there were a lot of people discussing EEG signals but with csp's being able to recognise and distinguish neural activity with only 10 EEG signals, so I don't think interpretation in a quick manner is too distant)whilst having an mobile platform of some type for the user to physically move freely in, as preventing signals reaching muscles in every individual nerve at this time would be work of great intricacy, not impossible though.

[CraigD]

Neuroscientists found out how to inhibit muscle contractions in a rat using optogenetics.

 

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/278901.php

That’s an interesting article. Earlier in this thread we looked at optogenetics involving brain nerves, but this 2014 July article is about using it on spinal nerves. Optogenetics is a versatile collection of techniques.

 

So it can't be that far away until it could be possible for humans. Just putting it out there.

I expect use of the “optogeneitc toolkit” to study the human brain is not far in the future, though there are some major technical and ethical hurtles to overcome.

 

The main drawback with optogenetics is that it's far from non-intrusive. First, you’ve got to genetically alter nerve cells, which involves infecting them with a gene-inserting virus for 2 weeks or so. Then, you have to make a way to get visible light (since these genes are derived from existing light sensing organ-making ones, none of which are sensitive to light much beyond the visible range) to the special “opsin” proteins the genes express, which involves cutting holes and installing transparent windows over them – which you might improve on using fiber optics or similar, but even then, surgically intrusive stuff. I outlined this in a more detail, and gave some links, in this post.

 

Though I can’t see any way to escape the need for gene-insertions, the idea of using optogenetics on nerves outside of the brain, or even outside the spine, seems promising to me, because many of the nerves in our extremities are covered only in soft tissue, which is somewhat transparent to visible light. Imagine a system where a person in who all of the peripheral nerves in their body have been genetically modified to have opsins wears a suite lined with many precisely controlled lasers and photosensors. Such a system might be able to both suppress the normal muscle movement controlled by those nerves, “read” the nerves well enough to accurately measure what those movements were intended to be, and write to sensory nerves to give a full range of sensations, including a sense of limb and whole body position other than actual. Though this doesn’t look much like the pretty NerveGear helmet from SAO, it does look like its depiction of lying motionless in bed while experiencing vigorous activity in virtual reality.

 

Given that people are wary of merely eating genetically engineered plants, I expect there’d be a substantial resistance to genetically altering much of your nervous system to allow you to play a deeply immersive VR video game, but unlike the less permanently intrusive nano-tentacle electrode scheme that’s my current favorite approach, high-resolution optogentics nerve reading and writing has actually been done. Nanotech like I’m hoping could enable the nano-tentacle scheme hasn’t, and may not even be, in principle, possible.

[bobous]

I'm not an expert or anything remotely close to one. But I thought of an idea for the Nerve Gear. If we were to do tests and observe what kind of signals our brain produces whenever we move a muscle (flexing your bicep or bending your fingers) and set up the Nerve Gear to recognize those specific signals and input them to your character in-game. That way we wouldn't have to understand the brain in its entirety to be able to control our in-game avatar. The only thing left to do would be the ability to write to our brains either via nervous system, or directly to the brain and be able to induce REM sleep and send the information of what we want to see and feel from the game. Let me know your thoughts.

 

I'm sure that someone must have thought of this before, but I'd like to hear what others have to say about my thoughts.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, bobous! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself.

 

If we were to do tests and observe what kind of signals our brain produces whenever we move a muscle (flexing your bicep or bending your fingers) and set up the Nerve Gear to recognize those specific signals and input them to your character in-game. That way we wouldn't have to understand the brain in its entirety to be able to control our in-game avatar.

The problem with doing this with something like the NerveGear depicted in Sword Art Online, a neat non-intrusive helmet that the user simply wears, is that the actual brain activity that occurs when we flex a bicep or bend a finger must travel, in the form of electric charge, though brain, bone, and scalp tissue. This makes it difficult – perhaps impossibly so – to distinguish it from other brain activity.

 

The present day, real world technology that can detect such specific brain activity involves implanting electrodes in the brain, or optogenetic techniques, which are also very intrusive.

 

The only thing left to do would be the ability to write to our brains either via nervous system, or directly to the brain and be able to induce REM sleep and send the information of what we want to see and feel from the game. Let me know your thoughts.

The problem with writing to the brain is similar – difficulty doing something outside of the brain that very precisely effects very small regions of the brain, without effecting others. Again, the only present day methods that can do this are the intrusive ones.

[CaelesMessorem]

I've been wondering this for a while now (haven't had time to research it yet due to getting classes and work in order), but is it possible to either create or modify neurons? I remember reading something a while back when I was looking into nanotechnology that there was talk of creating a nanomachine that would mimic a ribosome, but would have allowed for the ability to be remotely controlled. I feel as though in a similar manner, if we were to create a neuron (or group of neurons depending on how the signals are conveyed between each other in a certain area of the brain) it would not only allow for direct read/ write capabilities with the required clarity, but also give us a means to transfer data remotely through a wireless connection. Neurons could be implanted at a nanoscopic level, and while invasive, would likely not be noticed (Similar to the manner in which CraigD proposed the wires be inserted into the individual neurons for his idea mentioned up-thread). The neurons could then transmit data to a device, which would likely be a headgear of some kind and serve as the go-between for the brain and game (or medium of your choosing). It's kind of a difficult concept to explain without me having done more research yet, so sorry if it's a tad confusing :surprise:

[CraigD]

I've been wondering this for a while now (haven't had time to research it yet due to getting classes and work in order), but is it possible to either create or modify neurons?

Because many soldiers have been severely brain injured since 2001, there’s a lot of currently well-funded research into implanting devices in their brains to “bridge” the damaged areas. Causing neurons to grow to repair brain or spinal cord damage, such as by injecting growth-promoting hormones of neural stem cells, has been a subject of serious medical research for many decades. To the best of my knowledge, none of this research has yet discovered a practical therapy, and none were focused on being able to distinguish individual or small collection of neurons, or sending information about them to a computer – that is, in being used for a brain-computer interface

 

The oldest and IMHO most promising research in implanted BCI’s involve attempts to give blind people sight (eg: the work of William Dobelle), and attempt to allow people with missing limbs or spinal injuries to control their limbs of limb prostheses (eg: the BrainGate project). I described and posted some links to articles about this in this post and this one.

 

A main interest and value in combining the fields of directing nerve growth and BCIs is in the field of “neurochips”, implanted devices where connections are not made by the precise positioning of electrodes, but by encouraging neurons to connect to grow into the device.

 

Optogenetics is a newer and very promising collection of techniques that genetically modifies neurons to make it possible to both “read” and “write” to them using light. We’ve discussed this field a lot in these threads.

[CaelesMessorem]

In what I was trying to describe, the created neuron(s) would function as a regular neuron does, passing signals from and through it to the other neurons in the group. However, upon receiving a designated signal from the data retrieval device (headgear, etc) the neuron would begin reading, transmitting, receiving and writting in addition to its regular functions, similar to the nanomachine I mentioned in my last post. There would be 1 neuron (or 1 group of neurons depending on if the neurons receive signals in a group all at one time, or if the signal is received individually and then distributed in a chain) for each of the 5 senses, as well as motor functions. The headgear would act as the relay from the neurons to the machine which it's connected to, likely to be a computer. The neurons would send their signals to the headgear, which would then convert them to binary and send it to the machine, which would then convert it to commands and carry them out. Essentially the man-made neurons would be serving as a more natural integration of machine to our biology than the chips or electrodes would.

[CraigD]

In what I was trying to describe, the created neuron(s) would function as a regular neuron does, passing signals from and through it to the other neurons in the group. However, upon receiving a designated signal from the data retrieval device (headgear, etc) the neuron would begin reading, transmitting, receiving and writting in addition to its regular functions, similar to the nanomachine I mentioned in my last post.

You basic idea makes sense. The difficult question is how get a neuron – created or not – to receive or send a signal from or to an external device.

 

Try imagining, and posting, in detail, some solutions to the problem, then look at the size of the objects the solution requires, compared to the size of the neurons to be read and written to.

 

Even device with nano-scale features – a nanomachine – quickly gets much too big, when features to allow it to do things we take for granted on the scale of most communication and computing devices.

[CaelesMessorem]

First of all, I found this IEEE editorial which gave a general overview of "wireless communications at the nanoscale." In it, two relatively new fields of research are discussed:

Electromagnetic Nano Communication (EM-nano), which utilizes EM waves for communication between nanomachines and would result in a wireless nanonetwork, which in the case of my previous idea would allow groups of neurons to "check" the data the others are sending creating a solid synchronization of data, as well as the potential to enact a check/repair sequence should data not match up.

The second field, Molecular Communication, utilizes naturaly-occuring biological mechanisms (such as Diffusion-based Molecular Communication and Calcium Signaling) to allow communication between nanomachines, which in this case would be nano-neurons, allowing for a nanonetwork more along the lines of cell-to-cell communication. Personally, this would be my first choice for creating nanomachine communication networks for nanoneurons, as having a bio-firendly approach seems safer imo. The paper "MoNaCo: Fundamentals of Molecular Nano-Communication Networks" touches on possible ways to establish biological nanonetworks.

 

However, that's just wireless communication between nanomachines. There still remains the issue of wirelessly connecting with machines outside the body. The only potential way to curb the issue that I have seen would be to implement wireless networks onto chips used in the nanomachines, the idea being described in this article.