The Formula E Championship for electric racing cars is coming to New York City, and Lucian Gheorghe, the senior innovation researcher at Nissan Motor Corporation, neuroscience and biotechnology, joined Cheddar News to discuss his program to enhance racing driver performance by tapping into the neuroscience of driving — with hopes that it has applications beyond the sport. "That's the whole idea is trying to offer tools for any person to become a better driver as quickly as possible in order for all our customers to be actually having an electrifying experience in our EVs," he said. "And there's no better way of doing that than learning from the best and applying it to everybody else."

Closing Bell

Nissan on Boosting Formula E Race Car Driver Brains to Improve EV Future

Welcome back to closing bell here on Cheddar news. Now the Formula E World Championship is coming to new york city this weekend and in case you're not familiar Formula E is fast paced, global electric racing competitions And if you've ever wondered what goes on truly behind the scenes in the minds of these race car drivers. Nissan Brain two performances a program. They use the latest events, brain imaging and analysis tech to enhance drivers, speed reaction and overall performance. This sounds crazy. So joining us now is solution George sr innovation researcher Nissan Water corporation lucian, what is this all about? How does it work? And does it really improve the driver's racing performance? Well, we surely hope so. So what we've been doing, we've been extensively studying the differences between the brains of our To drive race drivers, which basically they are one of two of the top 30 human beings in terms of skills for for driving. So I've been comparing the anatomy of their, of their brains compared with the large pool of our usual customers of our average drivers. I've been comparing also electrical activity Of our drivers with more than 200 hours of recordings of our average drivers. So what kind of data points are we gathering here? Is it like reaction speed? Is it like how many times your eyes are fidgeting from location, location? What kind of data are you harvesting here to make a decision on whether or not performance is being increased? It is much much more detailed than that. We're actually looking at structural changes in the brains of the drivers. We found out that parts of the brains of these highly skilled drivers are are literally larger than the average driver and we have found out that there are certain past neural paths that have been developed and they are actually working a lot a lot faster than what happens in in an average drivers in an average person's spring. Now we're trying to build a training that we're trying we're building a training program that can also generate this kind of accelerated past that correlate with driving skills. And we've been applying that to a pool of drivers. We've been studying that for the last last years. So you mean to tell me that you're essentially taking the best parts of these pro drivers. Making a program to then teach average drivers how to be more elite. That is exactly the idea. So our idea we're building exciting vehicles right? But you can only you can only have a positive experience driving experience in such electrifying vehicles if you're a pretty good driver right? If you continuously stressed controlling your vehicle, there's no fun there. So that that's the whole idea is trying to offer tools for any person to become a better driver as quickly as possible in order for all our customers to be actually having an electrifying experience in our E. V. S. And there's no better way to do that than learning from the best and applying it to everybody else. That's incredible. So what sparked this? Whereas someone just driving like these professional drivers were so good that someone has to say like you know he was born different than us, Maybe we should study him. Like what sparked this idea? Um we actually have been using, we've been applying neuroscience to tune our vehicles for more than 15 years now and we have been studying different types of understanding brain activity in order to improve our vehicles, will be building smart systems that can support the driver. But this is the first time i when when when we thought okay but there's still this limit of skills, how can we increase the skills of our of our drivers? So then what we're doing now, we're taking all this technology that we developed before we applied to the best drivers that Nissan has, Sebastian Buemi and maximilian Gunter. We extract that information and we go back to that to, we were going back to apply that to our to our customers. There's also this this ultimate goal obviously of increasing the performance or our Formula E. Drivers and that's exactly where we're standing. Now. This is the first race where our drivers are using a stimulate brain stimulation device that has been bespoke for their specific brains with the hope and this is what I want to hear from our drivers tomorrow and the day after tomorrow to help them concentrate better to help them perform constantly on a on a high level? That's incredible. All right, So why stop at, I mean do we stop that formula e why not do this with other industries and other industries that you guys are using this innovations for basically we are not using it for other industries because our business and and and our mission is to provide positive experiences related with mobility. But we do work with many universities. I work with many, many startups and all these. We make sure that the that the technology that we developed together, we give all these companies the freedom to apply it and use it to any other um let's say application or other domain domain that they feel like we are never gonna, let's say keep it only for ourselves, only for automotive industry. That's incredible. So my last question for you is how do you think this is going to shape the future of just I feel like just of driving will start with but in other industries as well, because I can imagine like if you get the world's best surgeon who has the most steady hands, then you put this technology in them and then you teach other surgeons what's going on in his brain and reaction and stuff like that, they become the best surgeons. So what kind of future do we paint to here with this research? What I believe this is the the entrance on optimizing learning and we as human beings, right? We continue to learn through our lives. But what would happen if we can optimize and we can we can accumulate skills, know how at a lot faster pace and also accumulate the correct the right skills for each person by wise, I think as as a human race we have the opportunity to evolve and to contribute each generation to contribute to our cultures and our and our economies and so on at a lot higher pace than what happened in the past. All right, so last question. When do we find out if this worked? When when do we get results? Part of results we're getting already. So I have applied this brain stimulation to a group of students back in the UK at the University of ESsex and I have literally seen that the part that has been stimulated compared with the people getting the placebo stimulation Have learned 50% faster and they have retained the skill 30% more so slowly we are already getting getting results. The ultimate image would be for example if you if you could have a super quick training program That you could come to our U- two are for example dealers and you get your car fixed. Also you get your skills a bit upgraded then you go back with a better car being a better driver. If that would happen in 5 to 10 years, it means that I've done my job Well dr Lucien this is all very interesting. Now if you need a brain for the world's best anchor, you can use mine. I will gladly help you dr Lucien George, Senior Innovation Research Nissan Motor Corporation. I will donate to you doc because this sounds awesome.