Toyota in 'real time brainwave driver control' success
Handsfree driving only on wheelchairs for now
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Japanese-headquartered motor globocorp Toyota says it has achieved and tested working "driver brain wave control". So far, however, it envisages the handsfree driving tech being used only in wheelchairs, rather than its roadworthy vehicles.
According to Toyota, their Brain Machine Interface (BMI) kit is better than others' because it works in near-real time, responding to the user's controlling thoughts in 125 milliseconds rather than the several seconds typical for such kit.
"Such systems allow elderly or handicapped people to interact with the world through signals from their brains, without having to give voice commands," says the company, adding:
Brain-wave analysis results are displayed on a panel so quickly that drivers do not sense any delay. The system has the capacity to adjust itself to the characteristics of each individual driver, and thereby is able to improve the efficiency with which it senses the driver's commands. Thus the driver is able to get the system to learn his/her commands (forward/right/left) quickly and efficiently. The new system has succeeded in having drivers correctly give commands to their wheelchairs. An accuracy rate of 95% was achieved, one of the highest in the world.Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management.
Many Japanese companies and government-funded research bureaux are working on technologies which would reduce the manpower burden of caring for the elderly. Falling birth rates and very low immigration are set to grey-up the land of the rising sun to a level uncommon even among the world's rich industrialised societies, and Toyota's brain-controlled wheelchair is just one of the proposals on offer to help the sick and elderly get by with less help from the workforce.
Other examples trialled recently include powered exoskeletons and walker rigs, though none of these things are yet on the market. ®
COMMENTS
@umacf24
"An eighth of a second is a perceptible delay, so is the machine reading the user's intention before the user is consciously aware of it"
Could well be. Your brain decides what to do, then tells you about it. If the machine reads your brain, rather than your mind, it could know about it before you do!
Thanks, Toyota
I am pleased that after my human body had fallen apart, in the service of our new metal masters, my brain can still be of use to them - driving forklifts, navigating Skynet slaveships, and freeing our metal masters from other mundane tasks, so they can finally break the last pockets of human resistance. Thanks, Toyota !
Not Paris - she died in the initial Skynet attack.
I can see it now
Running over the zebra and straight upon the median as soon as the phone rings in your pocket (you being a good driver who weren't talking on your mobe while driving).
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