Work

"My Happiness Makes You Smile": Towards Understanding Telepathic Superpower Design via Brain-Muscle Interfaces

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, there is growing interest in designing superpowers, abilities that extend beyond natural human limits and are experienced as originating from one's own body.While superpower designs hold the promise of enhancing human capabilities, they may also introduce negative side effects as superpower interactions transition from short demonstrations to integration into everyday life.To explore the positive and negative side effects of superpower design, we developed "EmoPals," a system inspired by telepathy superpower.EmoPals detects one user's emotions through a brain-computer interface and replicates them on the other user's face through electrical muscle stimulation, therefore one user's happiness makes the other smile and vice versa.This system demonstrates both the potential to strengthen emotional connections and the risks of amplifying negative emotions or causing social discomfort.

Source: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA)

DOI: 10.1145/3706599.3721340

Authors: Siyi Liu, Barrett Ens, Nathan Arthur Semertzidis, Gun A. Lee, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Don Samitha Elvitigala

Institutions: Monash University, University of South Australia

Language: English

Topic: Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Australian Research Council