Toyota has already unveiled a prototype of its Pod concept car, which has headlights that fade from bright to dull and change color to indicate happy, sad or angry moods, depending on how the driver inside is feeling. In a joint effort with Stanford University in the U.S and an Edinburgh based company Affective Media, carmaker giant Toyota has made another leap into making a car that can read one’s feelings.

Research showed that a driver’s emotional state affected how well they drove: If they were happy, they drove well and if they were sad, they tended to drive worse. “This is the next generation of car, which can detect what mood you are in,” said Affective Media CEO, Christian Jones. Identifying what mood the driver was in by detecting the emotion in their voice was taking things a step further, Jones said. “It’s not as sci-fi as it sounds. We already use our voices for different functions inside the car. It’s about giving appropriate information at the right time.” The in-car voice would talk to you in an attempt to improve the state of your mood. The technology would not act as a counselor to solve complex issues, but it would be more like a “best friend” who could cheer you up at the end of a long day,” added Jones.

The technology can let drivers to communicate with each other, in an effort to prevent road rage. The absence of communication between drivers on the road often led to road rage. An alarm is triggered off to rouse the driver whenever it detects the driver is drowsy, quiet and with flat speech Jones believed that “It would give certain information that would help. If they were in a hurry, the car would work out the safer, faster route instead of, perhaps, a scenic route,”