Nissan’s new technology: mind controls car

NISSAN Motors has chosen the CES 2018 trade show — ongoing until Jan. 12 in Las Vegas, Nevada — to demonstrate a technology that will enable vehicles to interpret signals from the driver’s brain, redefining how people interact with their cars.

The car maker said its Brainto-Vehicle (B2V) technology, the latest development in the Nissan Intelligent Mobility program, “promises to speed up reaction times for drivers and will lead to cars that keep adapting to make driving more enjoyable.”

Nissan said the technology is the result of research on brain decoding technology. By catching signs that the driver’s brain is about to initiate a movement — like turning the steering wheel or pressing the accelerator — the system is able to predict and assist in the action more quickly. The technology can also detect and evaluate when the driver is not comfortable over the vehicle’s behavior when it’s set to autonomous mode, and will alter driving style accordingly.

“When most people think about autonomous driving, they

have a very impersonal vision of the future, where humans relinquish control to the machines. Yet B2V technology does the opposite by using signals from their own brain to make the drive even more exciting and enjoyable,” said Daniele Schillaci, an executive vice- president at Nissan.

Other possible uses include adjusting the vehicle’s internal environment, said Lucian Gheorghe, senior innovation researcher at the Nissan Research Center in Japan, who’s leading the B2V research. He cited the technology can use augmented reality to adjust what the driver sees and create a more relaxing environment.

The car maker explained B2V calls for the driver to wear a device that measures brain wave activity. This is then analyzed by autonomous systems that can react 0.2 seconds to 0.5 seconds faster than the driver.