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REAL LIFE NEWS: DRIVE BY THOUGHT

by Hazed

German researchers have come up with a way to control a car using the power of thought alone.

Artificial intelligence professor Paul Rojas and his team from the Free University of Berlin have demonstrated how a driver can control a vehicle using only brain sensors. The driver wears a special wireless headset with 16 inbuilt EEG sensors to measure brain activity, and learns to move virtual objects just by thinking. Each action produces a different pattern of brain activity and this is interpreted by software which associates the patterns to specific commands, such as turn left, turn right, accelerate and brake.

The commands are then fed to the drive-by-wire system of the car - a modified Volkswagen Passat fitted with cameras, radars and laser sensors. In this way the driver's thoughts control the engine, brakes and steering. The researchers recently tested the brain-controlled car on a disused airport.

Hmmm. Not sure I would trust a driver to keep their thoughts firmly fixed on driving - I would imagine any distraction could result in extraneous thoughts sending the car careering off the road!

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/thought-controlled-car-demonstrated/17924/

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