Commercial air travel is a largely terrible experience, and aviation companies patent many ways to make it a little less miserable or even more dystopian. Where does the reading of the emotions of the passengers fall in order to offer them a transcranial stimulation therapy? I leave it to you.
Brazilian aerospace manufacturer Embraer filed a patent application for a “brain stimulation system to provide a sense of well-being” in 2016, and was awarded last year. But I just figured it out. thanks to a more recent Mastodon post from attorney Jeff Steckand I am fascinated. Embraer’s reasonable initial premise is that many people become anxious on long car, train and plane trips, “turning a short trip into a long one”. From there, envision a complex system encompassing:
In other words, your plane seat could read your face, know if you’re anxious, and (if you choose) send an electrical or magnetic signal to theoretically calm you down.
Transcranial magnetic or current stimulation is an accepted treatment for depression and a potential option for some other mental health conditions, and you can already buy non-invasive devices that provide it for home use. An airline delivering it based on facial analysis would pose a problem enormous Lots of personal data privacy and security issues, but companies file patents that never get commercialized all the time. So I personally don’t expect electrification as a perk on my next flight, although Jerry Seinfeld’s jokes about it pretty much write themselves.
