CBC News has an article about some research currently going on at Japan's Tokyo University experimenting with enabling avatar control in Second Life using one's own body and brain waves. Apparently, the research subjects work on a colored mat in front of a web camera so that the subject's position can be calculated in three dimensions, and the result fed back into the virtual world to create corresponding movement with the avatar.

Keyboard controls in general are usually a barrier to entry -- learning the controls made our acclimation to Entropia Universe challenging, for example -- so seeking a more naturalistic, motion-based control scheme is definitely a right-track kind of idea. But would people really want to strap a webcam to their hip and walk around on a mat when they want to visit their favorite virtual world? Adding extra steps and peripherals seems counter-productive to reducing barriers to entry.

But at another Japanese university, Keio University (also in Tokyo), another research team is reportedly taking a different tack. With electrodes strapped to the head, subjects can move their avatar simply by thinking of commands like "left" or "forward." But according to the article, there are some difficulties with this method:

"The difficult part is to stop thinking," said research student Takashi Ono as he made his avatar stroll through a virtual Tokyo neighborhood in Second Life.

"I want to go left, so I think, 'left' — but then the avatar turns too far to the left before I can get rid of the command in my head," he said.

The research team isn't planning to commercialize their technology, although they're seeking to patent it, and the use they've got in mind -- video games -- seems as if it might have a bit more potential than to navigate virtual worlds, where we're stressing ease of use and simple, universal methods of access.

[Via CBC.ca]