Driving Cars with Your Eyes: A Glimpse into the Future of Technology
AI can handle some mind-blowing tasks these days, but I never imagined it enabling people to drive cars using nothing but their eyes. Well, that’s exactly what I did this week. Chinese firm Honor unveiled a brand new Magic 6 Pro smartphone at an event in Barcelona packing a bewildering eye-tracking feature. Sensors and AI inside the device know where your eyes are looking on the screen so you can tap buttons without lifting a finger.
“The experience was eerily like something I could imagine in an episode of Black Mirror,” said one participant. It’s a feature that could eventually be a real life-changer for people with disabilities and movement disorders. And to demonstrate the tech’s wildest potential, Honor has come up with a concept that allows users to drive cars. Central Recorder was among selected media invited to test the wacky tool out – see our full experience in the video above and read-on below for the verdict.
###AI give it a try
As a concept, it’s important to point out I wasn’t able to drive the car on an actual road. Instead, it’s in a safe warehouse environment and the vehicle has very strict limits so it won’t accidentally veer off if I look at the wrong button. I also controlled the car outside from a safe distance, I didn’t sit inside while it was moving. To begin, you have to calibrate your eyes with the smartphone so it can recognise them. Once that’s done, there’s a dedicated app featuring four simple buttons: engine start, engine off, move forward, move backward.
All you have to do is stare at the relevant button and the car will do its business automatically. My experience was a bit hit and miss – the ignition started fine. But when I tried to move it forward the eye-tracking took a while to pick up on my glare. It reversed without any issue and then the engine off button took a while. Others testing it out in my group had no problems, so perhaps I needed to calibrate it better or hold the phone up higher.
###The Future of Eye-Tracking Technology in Cars
We’re clearly a long way from actually driving cars on roads with our eyes – if ever – but the experience was eerily like something I could imagine in an episode of Black Mirror. As I explained earlier, I can definitely see how this feature might be useful for people with disabilities – once it’s been refined. You can also envisage how it could work nicely when you’re actually driving behind the wheel and want to do something like answer a call without physically picking up your phone (though you can already do this with your voice). It’s taken years to make self-driving cars a thing and we’ve only started to scratch the surface, so you can imagine how long it would take eye-tracking controlled cars to become a norm – but it was fun to try.
The ability to control everyday apps with your eyes will appear on the Honor Magic 6 Pro in an update due to land in the next few months.
###Honor Magic6 Pro Offers
Aside from all the AI, the new Android smartphone boasts some camera upgrades. A 180-megapixel telephoto camera lens with 2.5x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom have been introduced, alongside a 50-megapixel ultra wide camera and a 50-megapixel main camera. Honor has worked on the battery too, enabling the Magic 6 Pro to charge to 100 per cent in 40 minutes. The firm is offering £250 off for those who sign up to the free HiHonor service, making the final total £849.99. Just sign up to HiHonor and use the code AM6PP250 at the checkout.
All prices in this article were correct at the time of writing, but may have since changed. Always do your own research before making any purchase.