‘Smart glasses’ can track your brainwaves and let you control video games, report says

Fitness trackers measure things like exercise, steps, heart rate and sleep. But new “smart glasses” take the idea to the next level by tracking brainwaves and body movement, researchers say.

Prototype e-glasses can also track the wearer’s eye movements, so you could use them to control a computer or video game, according to a team of researchers from Korea and the United States.

The researchers said they built the prototype glasses to show how they could be a platform for the future of wearable tech. The team published details of the 3D printed glasses, in which the lenses change color to become sunglasses, in the American Chemical Society’s Applied Materials & Interfaces journal.

“Fitness tracker bracelets and watches provide useful information, such as step count and heart rate, but they usually can’t provide more detailed data about the wearer’s health,” according to a news release from the American Chemical Society.

Researchers “have developed smart electronic glasses (e-glasses) that not only monitor a person’s brain waves and body movements, but also can function as sunglasses and allow users to control a video game with eye motions,” the ACS said.

The glasses can measure electrical impulses in the wearer’s brain and track eye movements, which can help doctors diagnose sleep disorders and epilepsy, according to the report. The glasses can also track a person’s posture, along with heart rate, exercise and more common metrics, the researchers said.

“The motion detector allowed the researchers to track the posture and gait of the wearer, as well as detect when they fell. The EEG recorded alpha rhythms of the brain, which could be used to monitor health. Finally, the EOG monitor allowed the wearer to easily move bricks around in a popular video game by adjusting the direction and angle of their eyes,” according to the ACS.

The glasses could be used for virtual reality or help with at-home health care to give doctors more data from afar, researchers said.