Upping the ante in weird not-entirely-automotive gadgets coming from automakers (think Honda's robo-legs and GM's Segway PUMA), Toyota's built a wheelchair that can be powered by human thoughts. Seriously.
Victims of disease and injury confined to a wheelchair but without the ability to move are often at the will of others. This technology will, hopefully, allow these individuals to drive their wheelchair around using brainwaves read by what looks like a strange shower cap hooked up to an electroencephalograph scanner. The movement of the vehicle is fairly seamless — but stopping is difficult. Users have to puff a cheek to actually bring the chair to a stop.
Sure, because that makes about as much sense to us as any explanation Toyota can come up with for how they get the brain shower cap to work. All we know is we're fairly sure this technology was derived from Professor X. [The Daily Mail]
Photo Credit: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO / AFP