Bengaluru Students Innovate a Device That Keeps Drivers From Dozing off During Long Trips

A mechanism that keeps stops your driver from dozing off while driving!

Four engineering students of PES University, Bengaluru, have come up with an innovative system that will make your long distance travel less worrisome.

The ‘driver drowsiness detection’ system alerts your driver through sound and vibration, prompting him to stay awake throughout the journey.Saahil Kamath, Aviral Joshi, Akshay Kumar C and Rahul B Prakash came up with this innovation.

The students, who also own a start-up called VISIO AI, designed the device within the span of a month.

Developed under the supervision of the Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, the project was guided by Special Officer, A. Vinay, and received financial backing from the state government.

The device works through a face-reading mechanism and has a camera attached to it, where a person’s eye movement and the number of yawns they take are monitored before sending alerts.

“The cut-off time for a person to blink his eye is 1.5 seconds. If a driver has his eyes shut for more than that, alerts would be sent. The same happens even if he yawns more than three times,” Saahil, who is in his final year of engineering, told The New Indian Express.

Depending on the camera reading of a person’s facial gestures, data is encrypted and sent to a server. If the driver is detected as being drowsy, vibrations to the steering wheel or sound alerts to keep him awake are sent by the device.

Comparing similar alert systems in the market that work on car drift mechanism, Saahil explains that the former doesn’t really provide accurate data and ends up costing a bomb. While such devices in high-end cars easily cost till ₹40,000, the innovation by the group is will cost around ₹10,000.

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“We saw that a majority of accidents in India take place as drivers fall asleep. Our target was to use minimum resources and make the devices affordable for all,” added Aviral, a third-year student.

The group also plans on reaching out to cab-service providing websites, who could install these devices.

The drowsiness detection device also acts as an attendance tracker. With its ability of face-recognition, the mechanism could be installed in school buses for keeping a check on students’ attendance. Real-time data based on kids boarding and de-boarding the bus can be shared with users.

A prototype of the device is ready for operation and the group has already received the patent.

You can reach out to the group at [email protected].

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