Australian road safety researchers on Wednesday 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, which covers one-third of the Australian continent.
Lead researcher Geoffrey Mackellar, from neuro-engineering 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.
During testing, 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.