Archive for August, 2007

Using real-time heart-rate to control a physical game

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

setup for heart-rate controlled physical game

Article on the always interesting Pasta & Vinegar concerning a physical interface which gets your heart pumping. Your heart rate acts as an input for the game. It’s proposed in the article that one’s heart rate would drive a racing environment (or other speed-based concepts) in which your speed is determined by how high your heart rate is, and that some other aspect of the game would also be influenced by your heart rate such as your ability to aim at something, turn a sharp corner, etc.

I’m not sure whether mapping speed to heart rate is a fair interpretation. What can you really know about a person by knowing their heart rate? To put it bluntly: maybe they’re really obese and just climbed a single flight of stairs. Do you want to challenge them further and choose to make a trade-off between excerting themselves or having more accuracy in the game, or would you rather make manipulating the game easier for them as their heart rate rises?