Drivers can now guide a car using their eyes, not hands

infrared light is used to allow a reasonable viewing angle for the eye camera, without limiting the wearer’s ability to see.

After a brief calibration the software on the laptop of the HED4 is not only able to capture the position of the pupil in the eye camera, but can also calculate the position in the scene camera that the wearer is looking at. These coordinates in the image of the scene camera (viewing position) are transmitted via an ordinary LAN to the onboard computer in the Spirit of Berlin.

The eyeDriver software in the onboard computer in the Spirit of Berlin receives the viewing positions at regular intervals over the LAN in the vehicle and uses it to control the steering wheel. The driver can choose between two modes: “free ride” and “routing.”

In the “free ride” mode the viewing positions are linked directly with the steering wheel motor. That means that the x-coordinates of the viewing position are used to calculate the desired position of the steering wheel. The further the driver looks to the left or right, the further the steering wheel is turned in that direction. The speed of the vehicle is set in advance and kept constant, as long as the position of the gaze is recognized. In case it is not possible to detect which direction the driver is looking in, for example, if the driver’s eyes are closed, the vehicle brakes automatically.

In the “routing” mode, the Spirit of Berlin steers autonomously most of the time. Only where there is a fork in the road, or an intersection, the car stops and asks the driver to select the next route. This requires the wearer of the helmet to look to the left or right for three seconds. If the driver’s gaze lingers long enough in one direction, the eyeDriver software confirms acoustically that the choice has been accepted. The decision is communicated to the planner in the vehicle. Then the artificial intelligence in the Spirit of Berlin can plan the route accordingly and continue to run independently.

The autonomous vehicle project

Prof. Dr. Raúl Rojas gained international success with his soccer robots, the FU-Fighters. They were world champions twice in the small-size league. Since 2006 Rojas and his team have been designing technologies related to autonomous vehicles. As part of this project, they developed the research vehicle Spirit of Berlin, making it to the semifinals in the DARPA Urban Challenge in California in 2007 (“Six Teams Cut in Urban Challenge Qualifying Round,” 31 October 2007 HSNW).

In the fall of 2009, in the innovative vehicle steering series, based on the test vehicle, the computer scientists Tinosch Ganjineh and Miao Wang developed iDriver, with which it is possible to steer the research car using an iPhone. This series is now complemented with the EyeDriver software. It was developed primarily by Miao Wang and David Latotzky in cooperation with the firm SMI. These two developments are simply sub-projects. The core of the research continues to be the autonomous driving.