The future of self-driving cars could be an extra hour of work

Cars are going to drive themselves sooner or later — so what will we do with all that extra commuting time so we're not stuck twiddling our thumbs? 

That's what Audi is looking to find out with a new study, conducted as part of a collaboration with the human-machine interaction experts of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering. It put test subjects in a super futuristic autonomous car simulation, then assigned them a series of attention-demanding tasks while monitoring brain activity with EEG sensors. 

It's called The 25th Hour project—an allusion to the 50 minutes or so the average driver spends behind the wheel, and the "extra" hour they could gain without having to drive.   Read more...