23 February,2011 12:04 PM IST | | Agencies
Imagine controlling your car by your thoughts only -- for instance, you just think of a congestion-free route to office which your vehicle should take and bingo you are right there.
Your imagination is now a reality, thanks to German engineers who claim to have developed such an autonomous car whose speed and direction can be overridden by the driver's thoughts, the 'New Scientist' reported. And, people with disabilities that prevent them driving regular cars could experience driving by controlling at least some of the car's functions, too.
The smart, semi-autonomous 'Volkswagen Passat' has been christened 'MadeInGermany'. Using laser radars, microwave radars and stereo cameras, the car can perform 360-degree obstacle detection and sense a car in front from its fenders up to 200 metres away, say its developers. In all respects, it's a state-of-the-art autonomous car fully capable of driving itself or interfacing with other interesting control systems like the iPad or iPhone.
To find out, the engineers at Free University of Berlin got a volunteer to wear an off-the-shelf mind-control headset containing 16 electroencephelogram (EEG) sensors. The system is supplied with a software development kit that allows users to train it to sense brainwave patterns indicative of certain thoughts -- for applications like gaming and tweeting, for instance. Of course, such EEG sensors have more immediate applications, such as controlling bionic limbs, allowing people to steer wheelchairs and even allowing users to control their iPads.
With the Berliner's Volkswagen, the user trained an on-screen cube to move left on a screen when he wanted to turn left, and vice versa. The idea worked and the team got their brain-controlled Passat working well in trials at Templehof airport in Berlin. "Our test drives showed that there is only a slight delay between the intended command and the actual reaction of the car. This is, of course, a demonstration and is not road worthy yet -- but in the long run, human-machine interfaces like this could have huge potential in combination with autonomously driven cars," the developers say.
