Devices that pick up brain waves and translate them into mechanical action are being developed to control prosthetic limbs, robots and video games. Soon you'll be able to control your television and phone. But now comes the BrainDriver, a car that is driven entirely by your thoughts.
It's a new application of the brain-computer interface to allow human drivers to control their car without a steering wheel. Researchers, led by led by Raul Rojas, a professor of artificial intelligence at the Freie Universitat Berlin, use an "Emotiv neroheadset" to record brain activity in the driver. The neuroheadset is a electroencephalography, or EEG, originally developed for video games by San Francisco-based company Emotiv.
Before a driver even steps into the car, they have to go through several rounds of mental training. That's when the driver learns how to move virtual objects just by thinking of moving them. The driver wears the Emotiv headset to record mental activity, so the device can recognize when the driver is telling it to turn right versus left.
In an interiew, Rojas told IEEE Spectrum, "The 'BrainDriver' application is of course a demonstration and not roadworthy yet, but in the long run human-machine interfaces like this could bear huge potential in combination with autonomous driving."
It's one thing to read about a car you can drive with your mind, but it's a whole different thing to see it in action. Luckily, we've got the video to prove the BrainDriver really works.
Would you feel safe driving a car with your mind, or are you going to keep your hands on the steering wheel firmly at the 10 and 2 positions? Let us know in the comments section.
Photo: Autonomous Labs
Tags: Cars
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