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July 29 2011
Use Your Brain to Brake, Not Your Leg
Scientists may soon give your braking leg a break. In a recent study in the Journal of Neural Engineering, researchers at the Berlin Institute of Technology monitored the brain signals of drivers and found that they could detect the study participants’ intent to stop before they actually stomped on the brakes. The findings could someday lead to automated braking technologies that help avoid devastating car crashes.
In the study, the researchers had 18 participants drive along virtual roads in a racing simulator that includes winding streets and oncoming traffic—the drivers had to maintain a certain distance behind the computer-controlled cars in front of them, which braked at random intervals. While the participants drove, the researchers tracked their brain signals using caps fitted EEG sensors.
With the EEG data, the researchers saw when the drivers were going to brake a whole 13 hundredths of a second (or 130 milliseconds) before they did it. At 65 mph, this tiny difference in reaction time can reduce braking distance by 12 feet. “While this may not seem [like] much, it may be enough to prevent accidents,” computer scientist and co-author Stefan Haufe told ABC News. The researchers are now planning to ...
February 23 2011
More Proof That We Live in the Future: Mind-Controlled Cars
Driving a car using only one’s thoughts is no longer the stuff of science fiction. It may not be ready for commercial use, but scientists have successfully completed a road test of the world’s first mind-controlled car.
Created by researchers at the AutoNOMOS labs of Freie Universität Berlin, the technology uses commercially available electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors to detect four different patterns of brain activity, which a computer translates to “turn left,” “turn right,” “accelerate,” and “brake.” The road to this achievement was long, as AutoNOMOS says on its website:
After testing iPhone, iPad and an eye-tracking device as possible user interfaces to maneuver our research car named “MadeInGermany”, we now also use Brain Power. The “BrainDriver” application is of course a demonstration and not roadworthy yet but on the long run human-machine interfaces like this could [have] huge potential in combination with autonomous driving. For example when it comes to decide which way you want to take on a crossroad while the autonomous cab drives you home.
The research car was formerly a wholly computer-controlled car, but was re-engineered to be thought-powered. In the new navigation system drivers control ...
February 11 2011
Want the City to Fix a Crater-of-Doom Pothole? There’s an App for That
Doing good is getting easier. Soon, you’ll be able to do your civic duty of reporting potholes without even lifting a finger. The city of Boston is working on a smartphone app that would automatically report potholes to authorities–making it easier to find and fill the more than 19,000 potholes Boston grapples with each year.
The in-development Street Bump app uses a smartphone’s GPS and accelerometer technology to register the moment when a car lurches into a pothole and to identify the location. No need for the driver to call or email city officials, the app just goes ahead and sends the message on its own.
The engineers behind the app–who hail from the Boston mayor’s office of New Urban Mechanics, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the Santa Fe Complex–believe Street Bump will make city driving easier, and will save city government some headaches.
As the Boston Globe reports:
Currently, most potholes are identified by DPW repair crews dispatched to drive until they find them, Boston Public Works Commissioner Joanne Massaro said. Roughly one in every six potholes that ...
November 05 2010
The Secret Knowledge of Taxi Drivers Could Be Added to Online Maps
Microsoft researchers in Beijing are trying to best Google maps by culling knowledge from a mythical beast known as the taxi driver.
The Microsoft folks are trying to improve their online maps using the cabbies’ deep knowledge of Beijing. The problem with typical maps and the directions they offer is that the shortest route isn’t always the fastest route. In big cities, cabbies know which side streets offer shortcuts, and what areas of the city to avoid at which times.
The researchers are trying to rake that data out of the cabbies’ habits by analyzing the GPS data from over 33,000 taxis in Beijing. The group at Microsoft Research Asia, led by Yu Zheng, developed an approach (called T-drive) to analyze and merge this cabbie data with satellite maps to improve the mapping experience and offer faster directions–even if the driver doesn’t engage in the lane swerving, honking, and pedestrian slaloming that give cabbies an edge. 
As Technology Review reports:
According to the Microsoft researchers, the routes suggested by T-Drive are faster than 60 percent of the routes suggested by Google and Bing maps (which provide essentially the same driving time estimates as each other). Overall, T-Drive can shave about 16 percent off the time of a trip, the researchers say, which translates into about 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of driving.
This approach could work just as well in other dense, cabbie-infested cities. The team is also working on projects that will incorporate real-time accident and traffic data into these “smart” maps.
Technology Review reports that other companies trying to improve maps and directions are taking data from driver’s cell phones in California and Boston, while a person-to-person route sharing application called WAZE allows you to share tips with your social network.
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Image: Flicrk/Boris van Hoytema
August 11 2010
Texting-While-Driving Coach Slightly Delays Appalling Crashes
If your car could talk, it might tell you to stop texting. At least that’s what one research team hopes: after paying young drivers to perform texting-like games while driving a simulator, they found that visual warnings from an in-car “coach” helped keep drivers’ eyes on the road.
For high-risk drivers, the warning system “more than doubled their time until a virtual crash,” a University of Washington press release says. That might not sound entirely reassuring. But the researchers say a similar system installed on a real car might help risky drivers avoid a crash altogether.
A team led by Linda Ng Boyle, an industrial and systems engineer at the University of Washington, first had a group of 53 drivers, ages 18 to 21, attempt to drive a simulator while simultaneously playing a matching game. As an incentive to take the game seriously, they paid drivers according to the correct number of matches they made. The riskiest drivers took their eyes off the road for between two and a half to three seconds, compared to moderate and low-risk drivers who would glance off the road for less than two seconds during their longest glances.
In later tests the researchers activated the driving coach, which flashed warnings on the matching game’s screen. The study noted that the coach decreased the length of high-risk drivers’ glances by an average of 0.4 seconds, decreased their longest glances by about one second compared to risky coach-less drivers, and increased high-risk drivers’ time to collision by around 8 seconds. In the press release, Ng Boyle says the research shows that driver coaching systems can work for both risky and safer drivers:
“I think that drivers are coachable…. The worst drivers can benefit the most, because we can change their behavior the most dramatically. We can also reinforce the good behavior for safer drivers.”
If future driving coaches can talk, we suggest the voice of Knight Rider’s KITT or, better yet, Obi-wan.
Related content:
Discoblog: Texting While Diving? Buoy Allows Text Messages From Submarines
Discoblog: Woman Receives First Ever PhD in Texting
Discoblog: Watch Those Thumbs Go! Champion Texter Wins $50,000
Discoblog: The New Defense Against Despotism: Text Messaging
Image: Linda Ng Boyle / University of Washington News
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