Fernando Orellana and Brenda Burns have teamed up on a neat project, which involves a robot logging and re-enacting dreams of a human subject. Brainwave patterns and eye movements during dozing will be monitored, depending on what’s logged, the robot will alter its behavior accordingly. Sure, this isn’t dream enactment proper, but it is as close as we are going to get in the not too distant future. The robot, dubbed Sleep Waking, will function in two main ways. Jump for the video.

Its head will be controlled by the eye position of the subject, e.g. if you’re eyes are looking left, Sleep Waking will move its head to the left. The second behavioral control will rely on EEG information. Using an algorithm, the creators discovered a set of brainwave patterns, to each pattern a pre-programmed behavior was assigned. When a match is made with the EEG readout, Sleep Waking will carry out the designated action.

The creators hope that their work is seen as a vision of the future, where one’s dreams are able to be enacted accurately, and dream scenarios are recorded just as pics are now. It’s an interesting concept, and we want whatever Fernando and Brenda are drinking, but our dreams are most prone to get us into a whole lot of trouble. Some things are just best left inside the old brain chamber. Frankly, what we did to that elf woman/unicorn in our dream time would surely have us dumped for obvious reasons, fired for doing it whilst we should have been at dream work, arrested for violating bestiality laws and punched in the wiener because Mr Elf/Unicorn was thoroughly displeased in reality. Man, that dream was tripping. You can catch Sleep Waking on February 16th at the Exit Art exhibition. [We Make Money Not Art]

Via [Gizmodo]

Share This

Share This

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 1:08 am and is filed under General Gadgets News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.