Next: Translating brain activity signals into driving and other computer-assisted interactions

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The car pow­ered by your MIND: BMW i3 nav­i­gates a track using noth­ing but its dri­ver’s brain waves (Dai­ly Mail):

“Con­trol­ling cars with your mind may sound like some­thing from a sci­ence fic­tion film but this futur­is­tic idea has just become a real­i­ty. Experts have mod­i­fied a BMW i3 elec­tric car so it can be dri­ven remote­ly using just a per­son­’s thoughts…

The team replaced the dri­ver’s seat of the BMW with a mechan­i­cal rig capa­ble of press­ing the ped­als and turn­ing the steer­ing wheel on com­mand. A dri­ver was then fit­ted with an elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) neu­ro head­set to mon­i­tor their brain activ­i­ty while being trained to remote­ly dri­ve the car. This train­ing involved think­ing left, think­ing right, think­ing about going for­ward and stopping.

Instead of sim­ply think­ing about these actions and move­ments, how­ev­er, such train­ing typ­i­cal­ly involves asso­ci­at­ing a spe­cif­ic men­tal image with each com­mand. For exam­ple, the soft­ware can be trained to asso­ciate a per­son think­ing about a float­ing bal­loon with turn­ing left. Each time the per­son thinks of the float­ing bal­loon their brain sig­nals are the same, and it is these sig­nals that are ‘trans­lat­ed’ into commands…

At this year’s Mobile World Con­gress in Barcelona, the Insti­tute of Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ics Engi­neers (IEEE) and Aus­tralian-based Emo­tiv demon­strat­ed a rac­ing game that uses sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy. A ‘dri­ver’ was wired up to Emo­tiv’s elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) head­set and the device was trained to read their unique brain patterns.”

To learn more:

• Info­graphic on Per­va­sive Neurotechnology
• Next: Mobile apps to assess brain waves and improve dri­ving safety