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This Mind-Controlled Toy Car Could Help Improve Concentration

Dutch design school graduate Alejo Bernal created a toy car that can be driven using a commercially-available EEG headset. The amount of concentration required to move it could provide exercise for those with attention deficit disorders.
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What’s the Latest Development?

For his graduation project, Design Academy Eindhoven student Alejo Bernal designed a toy car that operates through signals sent by a person wearing a NeuroSky EEG headset. As the wearer puts mental effort into moving the car, lights inside the car reflect brain activity: the stronger the light, the stronger the effort. Bernal calls this “an empiric neuro-feedback exercise…The user can’t feel anything tactile, but he will be able to visualise the behaviour of the brain.” Once the optimal level of concentration has been reached and sustained for seven seconds, the car will begin to move forward.

What’s the Big Idea?

EEG headsets have been used to perform a number of cool telepathic-like activities recently, but Bernal says his project, while fun, has a serious purpose: It “helps users to develop deeper, longer concentration by exercising the brain. It is possible for people to train or treat their minds through their own effort and not necessarily using strong medicines, such as ritalin.” Bernal demonstrated a working prototype of the car-headset system at Dutch Design Week last month in Eindhoven.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

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