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Brain Bats: learning to play Pong with your mind

Brain Bats: learning to play Pong with your mind

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We take a trip to Hack Manhattan to play a game of Pong with our brain as the controller.

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Brain Bats
Brain Bats

The Verge took a trip to Hack Manhattan recently, a collaborative space where members geek out on tech projects. We were there to play Brain Bats, a game the group invented that uses a NeuroSky EEG headset to measure your brain wave activity and translates those signals into the controls for a classic game of Pong.

The game began on a Arduino LOL Shield and was expanded to the large playing surface you see here. Brain Bats is one player against a computer, but the group is developing two player games where participants engage in a tug of war powered by their battling brain waves. The group also has plans for more sensitive equipment which will help them better measure cerebral activity.