Look At Your Mario. Now Back To Me.

Feel the excitement!

The front of the eye has a slightly positive charge and the back is slightly negative.  When the eye moves, the electrical field also moves, and equipment can be made to measure these weak electromagnetic fields.

The electrodes detect these changes and send a signal back to a custom daughtercard mounted on a circuit board that filters and amplify the signal produced by the player’s eyes darting back and forth, allowing them to control Mario. So if you look up, Mario will jump, if you look left that’s where he’ll run. [Wired]

None of them were getting past the first level (video below), which isn’t surprising considering you can’t look at the screen most of the time. It’s a pretty cool idea and all, but I’m still thinking about the whole “electric fields in the eyes” thing.  If someone wraps a copper wire around their face and then watches a tennis match, could it power a toaster oven?  Try this at home.

[Inset pic by Patrick Alexander.]