Skip to content
Technology & Innovation —

Driving a Car With Your Brain

For the first time, researchers have used brain signals to predict when a driver is about to slam on the brakes. The technology can shorten braking distance by four meters, preventing accidents.
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?

A team of German researchers has successfully used a driver’s brain signals to apply the brakes of a car. Using a driving simulator, the researchers attached electrodes to the scalp and lower right leg of the driver and then used both electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) respectively to detect the intent to brake. “These electrical signals were seen 130 milliseconds before drivers actually hit the brakes—enough time to reduce the braking distance by nearly four meters.”

What’s the Big Idea?

Implementing this neurological research in the real world would prove a challenge. Subjects in the study, for example, were strictly limited by laboratory conditions. Drivers placed in the simulator were asked not to move while attached to the electrode wires. In the real world, of course, drivers are free to move as they wish. In addition, marketing any technology of this kind would depend on whether drivers would feel comfortable handing over any braking responsibility to a computer hooked up to their head. 

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
Related
Surprising Science
Brain-to-Brain Interface—the Next Great Leap in Human Communication
Mark Zuckerberg recently reiterated that brain-to-brain interfacing is our species future. Today, scientists can have participants move things on a screen with their mind and signal to one another across vast distances. It may someday have therapeutic uses for ADHD, give us sense experiences not akin to our species, and even allow advertisers to invade our minds.   
Up Next