mercedes: Mercedes Benz Smart Car: Mercedes-Benz showcases car which you can give orders to just by thinking |

How would you like your car to be able to sense the command you are going to give it and execute the thing without you having to press any button or an option on the touchscreen? A car that can actually sense your thoughts and know what you would like it to do? Mercedes-Benz has been thinking along the same lines for some time now and they even have a new variant of a concept car which they first unveiled in CES 2020 first, as per a report by Mashable India. This is the Vison AVTR concept car and at the IAA Mobility 2021 show in Munich, Germany, the company showcased a new version of it.
The car reportedly comes with a BCI (Brain-Computer-Interface) device which you would have to wear when inside the car. Think of Professor Charles Xavier, the mentor and leader of the X-Men in the Marvel Universe, using Cerebro to locate people. While the BCI device here is not as complex as the one worn by Professor X and is far less elaborate, it certainly comes with electrodes that are meant to be attached to the back of your head for the method to work. The BCI headgear will need a little calibration first after which it will record and measure brain activity, says the report.

The car’s digital dashboard will have dots of light, each perhaps associated with different functions or tasks that can be given to the car and the tech will work when you focus your mind on a particular dot of light, which would then be sensed by the BCI unit and the appropriate command issued. Here is a look at the earlier version of the car.

The Vision AVTR is inspired, not by the master fictional telepath Professor Xavier, but by the characters of James Cameron’s Avatar, who can ‘talk’ to other species on their homeland by establishing powerful neural connections.
Some of the other special features of the concept car are that it has no steering wheel and the earlier version could be guided by placing one hand on a touch-sensitive surface that acts as a controller, there are “bionic flaps” on its back and its wheels allow the car with wood sprite-themed tyres that can move sideways without having to turn the car, to name a few.