Nissan Is Developing a Car That Will Read Your Mind

Mar 11, 2018

#Nissan

Ever since the Jetsons and Back to the Future, we’ve all been waiting for the development of the flying car. Although the automobile industry isn’t there yet, there are some examples of interesting technology on the horizon that will make flying cars look like a thing of the past. Automobile companies are now exploring the realm of driverless self-piloted cars. One company in particular is looking at our brain waves and developing a car that can simply read our minds.

Nissan’s Brain to Vehicle Technology

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nissan unveiled its plans to develop a technology called “brain-to-vehicle” interface. This will allow a car with semi-autonomous capabilities to simply read our mind and recognize whether a driver wants to break, swerve, or perform evasive maneuvers. The interface will measure patterns in a person’s brain through electroencephalography, or EEG, and use a headset dotted with electrodes pressed onto the driver’s head. These electrodes will then receive information from a person’s brain waves and translate into action for the vehicle.

The Benefits of a Car That Can Read Your Mind

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported that in 2016, a total of 237,461 people died in motor vehicle crashes across the United States and many more have been injured in a car crash. This is a six percent increase since the previous year and is the highest number of traffic deaths within the last ten years. Nissan’s brain-to-vehicle technology is expected to cut down on motor vehicle crashes as it can react to brain waves 0.2 to 0.5 seconds faster than a human operating a car. This will allow cars to maneuver away, swerve, or stop faster than ever before. These mere seconds could be the difference between life and death.

From Theory to Reality

Nissan’s technology is nowhere near a production-ready feature. According to a Nissan representative, “It’s something that’s being shown in a relatively early phase, and is not yet close to implementation. We are aiming for practical application in 5 to 10 years.” Five to ten years may seem like a long time, but Nissan isn’t the only one raising towards the finish line. Renault has also experimented with the use of EEG to control cars in 2016 and in 2015, Jaguar announced that it was using brain waves to ensure drivers were paying attention to the roads.

Therefore, with so much competition, maybe we could see the technology sooner rather than later.