Video game controllers can also measure players' emotions: researchers

Washington: Stanford engineers have developed video game controllers that can measure the player's brain activity and change the gameplay to make it more exciting.

This prototype controller was developed by Gregory Kovacs, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, in collaboration with Texas Instruments.The main area of research by grad students in Kovacs' lab involves developing practical ways of measuring physiological signals to determine how a person's bodily systems are functioning. Corey McCall, a doctoral candidate in Kovacs' lab, popped the back panel off an Xbox 360 controller and replaced it with a 3-D printed plastic module packed with sensors to develop the prototype.

The small metal pads on the controller's surface can also measure the user's heart rate, blood flow, and how deeply the user is breathing. Its light-operated sensor gives a second heart rate measurement, and accelerometers also measure how frantically the person is shaking the controller.

Custom-built software gauges the intensity of the game, in which the player must drive over coloured tiles in a particular sequence.The controller can provide feedback to the gaming console, which can then alter the pace of gameplay to better suit the player. "If a player wants maximum engagement and excitement, we can measure when they are getting bored and, for example, introduce more zombies into the level," said McCall.

"We can also control the game for children. If parents are concerned that their children are getting too wrapped up in the game, we can tone it down or remind them that it's time for a healthy break," added McCall.