Can analyzing a driver’s brain waves help solve driver-distraction issues, among the chief causes of traffic accidents around the world?
Auto industry insiders seem to think so. A Google search of electroencephalogram testing in cars reveals a long list of scholarly articles and clinical studies on the topic, and several automakers are known to have experimented with brainwave detection in drivers over the past decade, including BMW, Ford, Hyundai and Toyota.
However, the hurdle always has been the complexity of collecting those brainwaves from inside the vehicle cockpit. In tests to date, drivers have been required to wear cumbersome headsets, in effect hardwiring them to the car, for their brain’s electrical activity to be detected – a less-than-ideal solution for the real world.
Now a new startup, Detroit-based Neumo, says it may have the solution.
It’s still early days for the company, which made its coming-out announcement today (Dec. 11)brainwave-sensor-as-solution-to-distracted-driving#_msocom_1″>[1] , but Neumo already has been quietly shopping its concept around to automakers and Tier 1 suppliers.
Founded by Peter Freers, chief strategic officer and inventor of the technology, and CEO Niall Berkery, the startup is offering automakers a contactless, non-invasive way of collecting brainwave activity data and helping them interpret it in a way that can ensure drivers stay alert and are otherwise in tip-top driving form.
Core to the concept is a sensor, patented by Freers, that can be mounted discreetly in the vehicle’s headrest to collect brainwaves passively from up to 12 ins. (30.5 cm) away. Only very basic hardware is required, Berkery tells WardsAuto, consisting of a printed-circuit-board antenna that detects the brain activity and a receiver to relay the information collected.
Data gathered is crunched by Neumo’s proprietary software and scored on a 10-point scale, evaluating the driver’s level of distraction and drowsiness, state of health and well-being and the amount of workload and stress they are under.
In a vehicle application, scores exceeding certain thresholds would trigger vehicle features meant to regain the driver’s attention or help calm them down – such as drowsiness alerts or soothing ambient lighting and mood music. Each automaker would be able to decide how best to make use of the data in its cars and trucks.
In a static demonstration in which Berkery’s office chair is retrofitted with the technology and connected via Bluetooth to his computer, the Neumo sensor detects the executive’s brain activity while the software’s algorithms break down the raw data into subset groupings based on frequency, displaying those outputs on the computer screen in a series of virtual wave meters. The individual waves indicate how close Berkery is to the state of sleep, whether he is speaking and how much work his brain is doing.
Some 80%-90% of motor-vehicle accidents are said to be the result of human error, mostly due to driver distraction, fatigue, impairment, inattention, emotional stress and medical emergencies, according to health and safety agencies. Some 1.3 million people die and 50 million are injured around the world each year in motor-vehicle-related accidents. Distracted drivers are about four times as likely to be involved in crashes than those who are focused on driving, according to the World Health Organization.
Industry players and policymakers have taken steps to reduce distraction, limiting access to smartphones while driving, providing voice assistants to help manage information and control accessories and using steering sensors to detect when a driver might be getting drowsy. Automakers also are beginning to use cockpit cameras to monitor drivers – already a requirement in Europe and a path U.S. regulators are likely to follow – and radar is being deployed or experimented with to detect occupants in vehicles and track their state of health.
But Berkery says Neumo’s neurotech device would identify drowsiness sooner than a camera can and provide a wider range of data on the driver than a camera or radar sensor. In addition to distraction, the Neumo technology scores drivers for fatigue, emotional impairment and state of health. On its development slate are plans to broaden out those readings to include such things as whether the driver is under the influence of alcohol or other mind-altering substances and whether other vehicle occupants are suffering motion sickness.
“It’s a very versatile sensor that can measure quite a lot of things,” Berkery says. “And over time, with more data being gathered and with AI technologies, we think we’ll be able to deliver more insights and also improve the performance of those insights. We can be like your Apple watch for the car.”
A handful of companies have been shown the technology, the Neumo CEO says. Two, a European automaker and a global Tier 1 supplier, currently are evaluating early prototypes.
Cost is unclear, but Berkery implies the simplicity of the hardware should make the technology competitive, particularly if a dedicated microchip can be developed – a path that would be far down the road but a likely avenue to mass production, he says.
“There are no exotic components,” he says. “This is all resistors, capacitors and transistors. We don’t have (an application-specific chip) developed yet. But we think that would be the proper implementation that would get it down to a very affordable price…in the sub-$10 range for all of the incremental hardware.
“The goal is to get the hardware impact to us as low as possible to enable deployment across as many vehicles as we can as quick as possible,” he adds.
Berkery sees opportunities for Neumo in the commercial fleet – potentially the best near-term path, as well as the automotive and mobility-services sectors.
Much further down the road, there is potential for the technology to be used to operate certain aspects of the vehicle, the CEO says. brainwave control already is working its way into the medical field and video-gaming sector. BMW explored the concept of driving a retrofitted i3 electric vehicle remotely using brainwaves nearly 10 years ago.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Berkery admits, adding that for now, the startup simply is looking to “get customers engaged (and) understand where their areas of interests are.”The new company is likely to seek its first round of funding in early 2025 and currently is looking for a Detroit-area location to set up shop. It says it is actively recruiting for a chief technology officer, as well as experts in AI, data science, neuroscience, electronics, software engineering and testing.
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