Toyota (NYSE: TM) researchers in Japan have built a brain/machine interface (BMI) that has been demonstrated to control a wheelchair using a person’s thoughts.

The system enables a person to make a wheelchair turn left or right to move forward simply by thinking the commands. The response time is in 125 milliseconds. One millisecond is equal to 1/1000 of a second.

The BMI was developed at the BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC), a 2-year-old research center established by Japan’s government research unit RIKEN and Toyota Motor, Toyota Central R&D Labs, and Genesis Research Institute. Japan has focused on the control of devices through brain waves as a way to deal with the projected shortage of healthcare workers to tend to Japan’s large aging population.

The BTCC’s system uses several sensors placed over the areas of the brain that control motion to measure electrical activity in the region. The electical impulses triggered by the rider thinking of turning or moving the wheelchair are picked up and analyzed by an onboard laptop that passes the commands on to the wheelchair.

The system has an emergency stop that can be activated by the user puffing his cheeks.