A Car Powered by Thoughts? It's True!

A team of Chinese researchers, from Nankai University, have successfully made a “Brain Powered car” that will be controlled entirely on thoughts. The team in the city of Tianjin had spent almost two years in bringing up this car.

The driver can go forward, backward, come to a stop, lock as well as unlock the vehicle just on thoughts. As told by Researcher Zhang Zhao, the brain signal-reading equipment used in this car consists of 16 sensors capturing various EEG (electroencephalogram) signals from the driver's brain. These signals are then picked up and translated by a developed computer program which in turn controls the car. "The tester's EEG signals are picked up by this (brain signal-reading) equipment and transmitted wirelessly to the computer. The computer processes the signals to categorize and recognize people's intention, then translates them into control command to the car. The core of the whole flow is to process the EEG signals, which is done on the computer," Zhang added.

Associate Professor Duan Feng, who led this project, elaborated that the technology is aimed at to serve human beings better, and it might soon be possible for them to combine brain controlled technology and driverless cars. "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," told Duan. "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."

Expressing the motive behind the project, Zhang said, "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".

For the time being, the car can only be instructed in straight direction on thoughts and there are no plans for this “Brain Powered car” to go into production.

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