Whoa, watch where you’re going!
The other day I told you about a car that is able to actually steer itself and how I hope that the technology would be able to prevent car accidents in the future. Well, I just finished reading an article where a team of Scientists at Freie Universität, working under the computer science professor Raúl Rojas, are developing technology that will allow you to steer your car with your eyes.
You read that right. There are cameras and software that monitor where your eyes track on the road, collect that data and then adjust the direction of travel based on where you look. Acceleration and braking work independently of the eye-tracking software, called eyeDriver. The technology behind it is rather complex and you can read more about it here and here.
The car operates in two modes under this technology, free ride and routing.In the free ride setting, the steering works in conjunction with visual and physical input from the driver. On the other hand, routing mode offers autonomous steering by tracking eye movement. Only when you come to fork on the road will the car prompt you for decision making.
The software actually has the technology to sense when your eyes close, and when this happens it automatically applies the brakes. I would love to see more advancements like this that can hep make driving safer. As we begin to live busier and busier lives car accidents appear to be happening more and more. It would be wonderful to be able to cut down on the number of accidents and have safer highways.
Is Safer Driving Around The Corner?
I was thumbing through Yahoo News when I stumbled upon this article about a car that is set to climb (switchback laden) Pike's Peak this fall. Big deal you might be thinking right now, but the catch is that it will do so without a driver!
The first thing that flashed in my mind was the old movie "The LoveBug" where "Herbie" had a mind and personality of it's own. While this car is nothing like that, it may very well be able to one day help save lives and prevent car accidents.
Stanford University researchers have been working on technology that can make driving a much safer experience for us in the future, and this is a major milestone in that journey. This is certainly not the first major break through in cars that operate themselves. We currently have cars on the market with adaptive cruise control as well as cars that parallel park without the aid of the driver.
If you'd like to find out more about this car (Shelley) you can read the full article here.