German scientists develop 'brain-powered' car brakes

Motorists may soon be able to brake and avoid a collision by just thinking, instead of having to hit the brake pedal with their feet. A group of German scientists is working on such a system, after noting test drivers stopped 130 millseconds faster with thought than by hitting the brake pedal. "using EEG (electroencephalography) and (electromyography) EMG was found to detect emergency brakings 130 milliseconds earlier than a system relying only on pedal responses. At 100 (kph) driving speed, this amounts to reducing the braking distance by 3.66 meters," they said in their paper, published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. The research team included Stefan Haufe1, Matthias Treder, Manfred Gugler, Max Sagebaum, Gabriel Curio, and Benjamin Blankertz. In their study, the scientists used a driving simulator study indicating that the driver's intention to perform emergency braking can be detected based on muscle activation and cerebral activity. A separate report on CNET said the setup involves attaching electrodes to a volunteer's scalp to measure brain patterns and detect the intent to brake in an emergency situation. "The team identified parts of the brain that are most active just before a driver slams the brakes ... They then tweaked the mind-reading device to respond to the brain activity by pressing the brakes," CNET said. In the test, volunteers used a driving simulator where they maneuvered a virtual race car behind another virtual vehicle using a customized version of the open-source racing software TORCS. The CNET report said the setting included oncoming traffic, and the participants did not have a chance to avoid a potential accident by switching to another lane. "If the German researchers manage to work out the false-alarm issue--and get their EEG cap looking a bit more fashionable for the average commuter--they could be looking at a hot market," it added. — TJD, GMA News