Recently a new EyeDriver technology has been invented by the researchers at Berlin’s Free University. With the help of this latest technology the drivers will be able to steer the car with their eyes only.
Raul Rojas and his team from artificial intelligence group demonstrated this technology at the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. They carried out their demonstration on Dodge Caravan called the spirit of Berlin.
To use the EyeDriver technology the driver needs to wear a converted bicycle helmet which has two cameras and an infrared LED. The first camera installed in the helmet is the scene camera which takes the full view as a driver and the second one is trained on the driver’s eyes. The camera on the eye of the driver helps the driver to steer the car in the desired direction.
When the driver moves his eye s to steer the car the information is gather by a laptop computer technology called HED4 developed by SMI. The information is then sent to an onboard computer in the vehicle through a LAN.
When the driver is about to drive the car he needs to pick one mode out of two. The first one is “Free ride” mode in which the viewing positions are directly linked to the steering of the car and the car moves in the direction where the driver looks whereas the second one is a “routine ride” mode. In this mode whenever the car comes to an intersection it asks the driver to select the next route. For selecting a route the driver needs to stare in the selected direction for 3 seconds. The researchers believe that this technology is the future of vehicles and will give a whole new scenario to the automobile industry.
I appreciate the technology and the people behind it but I think it won’t work so well because people don’t really want to wear a helmet while driving a car. The technology will reduce the comfort level of the driver and most importantly the drivers won’t get the feel which they actually get when they manually steer the car. What do you think? Do you need an EyeDriver technology for your car?
