Aussie researchers unveil ‘attention-powered’ car

SYDNEY: Australian road safety researchers unveiled a pioneering “attention-powered car” which uses a headset to monitor brain activity and slow acceleration during periods of distraction.

The car, commissioned by the Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia, is about to depart on an awareness-raising road trip of Western Australia – a sprawling west coast state accounting for about onethird of the Australian continent.

Lead researcher Geoffrey Mackellar, from neuroengineering company Emotiv, said the car’s accelerator could be overridden by a headset with 14 sensors measuring the type and amount of brain activity which determined whether a driver was distracted.

In the testing phase, drivers were set specific challenges such as using their mobile phone, switching channels on the radio, drinking water or reading a map so that researchers could record their brain activity while doing so.

Emad Tahtouh, from production company FINCH, said the car used an array of neural inputs and speciallydesigned software to “go when you’re paying attention and slow when you’re not”.

“We’re looking at things like blink rate, eyes moving, head tilts, and also frequency of task-switching,” he said.

The pilot vehicle, a customised Hyundai i40, was built for the RAC as part of a research and publicity campaign to reduce the number of road deaths in the state, which currently run above the national average and are the worst in Australia. — AFP