NeuroCar is a car operated with human mind through Neuro Headset, speacial neuro device that detects electrical impulses from our brain (also called brainwaves) and wirelessly (through Bluetooth) communicates with the car. The car starts moving forward when the level of concentration goes beyond 20 nominal units and stops completely when the concentration level of an operator lowens.

This project has been created in 6 days during FabSchool VII in FabLab Polytech, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Our team is:

1. Oleg Dyatlov (the author of the project and moderator of working team)

2. Ilya Dyatlov (the author of the idea)

3. Kirill Smirnov (programming engineer)

4. Maria Zubkova (designer)

5. Polina Buriak (archiver)

6. Varya Emelyanova (soldering master)

Tools and materials

neuro headset NeuroSky BrainWave Starter Kit
Intel Galileo board
drivers for motors (L2983)
bluetooth-module (HC05)
battery Ultracell Ni-Cd 9.6 V
four sliding heads
plywood 4,6 mm (for carcass)
plastic, aluminium (for wheels)

StepDir laser was used for cutting plywood. 3D printer was used for printing wheels. Vertical machining canter First MCV-300 was used for making aluminium wheels. PC and smartphones were used for programming electronics and building connection with neuro headset.

Step 1: Carcass

We decided to create a carcass for our car with plywood 4 and 6 mm to lighten it. For cutting it we used StepDir laser. BMW X5 was our design model :). We used well-known programmes of 2D and 3D modeling (SolidWorks and CorelDraw). We did specially calculate a size of three bottom parts to build there Intel board, battery, drivers and sliding heads. The cracass is two side parts of 6 mm plywood and 27 parts of 4 mm plywood (they imitate the car body and car roof). There are several holes in those part because we decided to keep them together with wooden sticks fitted through every hole of each part. Then we understood that variant was not quite good as the parts would disconnect with time so we added glue

full bmw_x5_version.cdr
Download

Step 2: Wheels

We made couple of variants for wheels including plastic ones printed on 3D printer, but their quality was not satisfactory. Our final variant is made from aluminium. Also we experimented with their size to fit in the carcass we had so we also made couple of aluminium testers. We chose the lightest one so that it is easier for the car to move. For modelling them we used SolidWorks. On photos you can see both alumunium and painted red aluminium wheels

Wheels.sldprt
Download

Step 3: Painting

We simply painted our car black and our wheels red :) but then we added more stylish white-n-red lines on car's body

Step 4: Electronics and Programming

This part is probably the most difficult one. As we had never worked with Intel Galileo board before it took us some time to figure out how to operate it and to establish the connection between two bluetooth modules. For programming we used Arduino ID software. The instruction of making connection on the board you can see on photos. All our programme codes are added below.

In this code you can see that the car starts moving when the level of concentration is higher than 20 (but it can be easily changed). If the level of your meditation (read as relaxation) is higher than 60 (which also can be changed) the car turns right. It is possible because the headset transfers data in two different сhannels.

We also added several LEDs: two of them in the back indicate that the bluetooth connection is on (they light up when connection is not established and turn off when it is), two of them in the front indicate the signal from headset is strong and steady. Blue LEDs on the bottom light up when the car is absolutely ready for operation )

There will be more programming details coming on, stay tuned :)