AUSTRALIAN scientists have invented a wheelchair that people can drive with their thoughts.

The wheelchair can also navigate itself through crowds for a limited time using its own robotic brain.

One day it could even have personality, says chief researcher and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and IT at UTS, Professor Hung Nguyen, says.

The technology could conceivably open up a whole new frontier of thought-control based technology, Prof. Nguyen says.

Cars and household entertainment systems could conceivably be operated with the power of thought in the future.

"We've started with the wheelchair because there's a definite need for it," says Prof. Nguyen, who has worked in the field for almost two decades.

Prof. Nguyen's son, Jordan, 27, nearly paralysed himself after an injury from diving into a pool in 2005.

"I was lucky I didn't break my neck," Jordan, who conducted research for the thought-controlled wheelchair for his PhD studies, says. "There's only just a few technologies to control a wheelchair if you're disabled from the neck down."

The father and son have worked together to turn the wheelchair into a reality since.

The wheelchair has successfully passed through one set of clinical trials. It could be commercially available in anywhere between one to five years depending upon funding, Prof. Nguyen said.

HOW DOES IT WORK?