Sci-tech

Sci-Tech

Nissan to create thought-reading car

Nissan to create thought-reading car

Nissan is planning to create a car that can predict the driver’s intentions and prepare the car accordingly. Apparently it’s all in aid of safer driving. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

Nissan is working with a team of scientists in Switzerland to create a car that reads a person’s thoughts, predicts their intentions and prepares the car accordingly.

The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Nissan project aims to produce a car that looks at “brain activity measurement, eye movement patterns and by scanning the environment around the car in conjunction with the car’s own sensors” to predict the driver’s next move.

The idea is to balance the necessities of road safety with demands for personal transport, according to the Guardian.

The idea is based on a wheelchair that runs on thoughts already built by EPFL. They expect to deliver a workable product in four years.

This futuristic stuff isn’t new – Honda announced earlier on in 2011 that it was building a car that can run on thoughts too. They envisaged their thought harvester steering wheel device as a hat (that looks like a bit like a hairdresser’s implement) that the driver wears.

Nissan neglected to mention how their thought car would work for people whose minds tend to wander while driving. DM



Read more:

  • Mind reading car could drive you around the bend in Guardian;
  • Nissan research car that reads the driver’s thoughts in AFP.

Photo: REUTERS

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