Mercedes-Benz has a car that can read your mind

Are you annoyed by constantly going through the menus on your car’s touchscreen? Mercedes-Benz has a very futuristic solution.

On Monday, at the IAA Mobility 2021 show in Munich, Germany, the company displayed the next iteration of its Vision AVTR concept car, first shown at CES 2020.

According to Mercedes-Benz, the car now has tech that lets you perform certain tasks just by thinking about them. It’s based on visual perception — the car has light dots projected on the car’s digital dashboard, and a BCI (brain-computer interface) device with wearable electrodes is attached to the back of the user’s head.

Visitors of the IAA Mobility 2021 show can try the technology out by themselves by visiting the Mercedes-Benz booth.
Credit: mercedes-benz

After a short calibration period, the device can record and measure brain activity, so when the user focuses on a specific light on a dashboard, the device can detect that and perform a certain task.

Hopefully, the need to connect electrodes to the back of your head will go away in the future.
Credit: mercedes-benz

We’re not talking about something purely theoretical; visitors of the IAA Mobility 2021 show can try the technology out for themselves by visiting the Mercedes-Benz booth.

The Vision AVTR (a reference to the movie Avatar, in which the protagonists can establish neural connection with the natural world on the moon of Pandora) is Mercedes-Benz’s most futuristic concept. The car has no steering wheel, has its back covered in scaly-looking “bionic flaps,” and has wheels that can rotate far enough to allow the car to move sideways, among other futuristic technologies.