Global automakers and tech companies like Google and Apple are investing a lot of money into driverless cars, seeing them as the future of the auto industry, but there is now another technology that definitely seems to be even more revolutionary than cars that can drive themselves.
As Reuters reports, researchers in China have developed a first-of-its-kind car that can be controlled by a driver’s brain signals, thanks to a technology that has the potential to fundamentally transform the way people travel.
Using Brain Power to Move a Car
A group of researchers with the Nankai University in the Chinese city of Tianjin have created a technology that can be used to control a vehicle’s steering system, brakes and acceleration, with brain power alone. They have worked for two years to develop the technology, collaborating with Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors, which has provided the cars that the system is being tested on.
The equipment includes a total of 16 sensors that receive the EEG signals that are sent by the driver’s brain. The signals are then transferred to a special computer, which reads them using a special software developed by the researchers. Then, researcher Zhang Zhao says that the computer processes the signals so that it can recognize the intentions of the driver, translating them “into control command to the car”.
According to the researchers, the key to successfully controlling a car by one’s brain power is processing the EEG signals, which requires a highly advanced and sophisticated software.
Technology That Can Be Combined with Driverless Vehicles
With autonomous cars being developed by many companies within the auto and the tech industries, the Chinese team of researchers believe that their invention could be combined with self-driving technology to further improve road safety and make car travel more convenient.
“Driverless cars’ further development can bring more benefits to us, since we can better realize functions relating to brain controlling with the help of the driverless cars’ platform,” said the leader of the project, Associate Professor Duan Feng, from the university’s College of Computer and Control Engineering, in a statement for Reuters. “In the end, cars, whether driverless or not, and machines are serving for people. Under such circumstances, people’s intentions must be recognized. In our project, it makes the cars better serve human beings.”
Increasing Mobility Options for Disabled People
The researchers say that the main motivation behind this project was their desire to help people with disabilities overcome the obstacles preventing them from operating a motor vehicle.
“There are two starting points of this project. The first one is to provide a driving method without using hands or feet for the disabled who are unable to move freely; and secondly, to provide healthy people with a new and more intellectualized driving mode,” Zhang said.
At the moment, the prototype can only move in a straight direction using brain power, and researchers say that the vehicle will not go into production in the near future, noting that the technology could be further developed to give cars a wider range of movements.