Toy Trains You To Use The Force (Like Star Wars)

May The Force Be With You

Could The Force be with you? A toy due in stores this fall will let you test and hone your Jedi-like abilities. The Force Trainer (expected to be priced at $90 to $100) comes with a headset that uses brain waves to allow players to manipulate a sphere within a clear 10-inch-tall training tower, analogous to Yoda and Luke Skywalker's abilities in the Star Wars films.

No, you're not tapping into some "all-powerful force controlling everything," as Han Solo said in the movies. But you are reaching out with mind power via one of the first mass-market brain-to-computer products. "It's been a fantasy everyone has had, using The Force," says Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing.

Mind-control games may be the coming thing: Mattel plans to demonstrate a Mind Flex game (also due this fall), which uses brain-wave activity to move a ball through a tabletop obstacle course, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday.

In the Force Trainer, a wireless headset reads your brain activity, in a simplified version of EEG medical tests, and the circuitry translates it to physical action. If you focus well enough, the training sphere, which looks like a ping-pong ball, will rise in the tower. A state of deep concentration is needed to achieve a Force-full effect. "When you concentrate, it activates the training remote," says Frank Adler of toymaker Uncle Milton Industries, which is creating the Trainer. "There is a flow of air that will move the (ball). You can actually feel like you are in a zone."

Star Wars sound effects and audio clips emitted from the base unit "cue you in to progress to the next level (from Padawan to Jedi) or when to move the sphere up or down to keep challenging yourself," Adler says.

"Until today, EEG technology has been designed for rigorous medical and clinical applications with little regard to price (and) ease of use," says Greg Hyver of NeuroSky, which developed the brain-wave technology for both games. "We are putting this exciting technology into everyone's living room."

And just to think that we actually had others sleeping on metaphysics. Now we have corporations making toys for the metaphysical. Just think about it ATS... if you had mentioned 10 years ago that someone was going to create a toy that deals with you floating objects... what kind of reaction would you have received?


Universal Light Being....

Nice... I've been waiting to see what's going to be first to hit the shops properly. I've always been thinking some sort of PC game and headset first off, but this is cool. Just the right blend of gimmick and real interesting tech (none of it's really all that new though). Unless these things are ridiculously expensive I'm getting one

Seems like this is the force trainer to mind-controlled games as is pong to video games. Cool..can't wait till i can play halo with a brain reader..
The next Wii should have this tech in mind....