DriverAwareness
The "Driver Coach" system is based on a camera, sensors and machine learning algorithms. It monitors car driver behaviour and provides feedback to improve road safety. The system can be part of a larger Road Safety ECO system sharing data between driver and organisations (Smart City).
Install / Use
/learn @Tauvic/DriverAwarenessREADME
The Safe Driver Coaching System
A personal driving coach can make driving 57% safer
<img align="right" width="300" src="https://github.com/Tauvic/DriverAwareness/blob/master/doc/distracted.jpg"/>Strangely enough dangerous driving such as speeding and hard breaking is NOT the main cause of accidents. Of all car accidents 94 percent are caused by driver error and 57 percent by distracted driving.
Note: The number of deadly and serious accidents is not decreasing for many years so we need to do something more radical.
The idea is change driver behavior by monitoring and improve driving style in order to reduce injuries and damages.
The driver coach system will check for all safety aspects (360 degrees 3D aspects):
- Warn for Distractions (eating, drinking, phone usage :telephone_receiver:, loud music :musical_note:)
- Alert for Drowsiness (tired driver :zzz: wakeup sound :speaker:)
- Improve your Driving style and skills (situational awareness, mirror checking)
The objective is to make driving safer by developing an affordable personal driving coach. Therefore I open sourced this plan and its code and hope others including companies and organisations will step in and adopt it.
Approach:
- Get more people involved in the project (developers, safety experts, evangelists, test dummies)
- Verify that the idea is sound and can result in an affordable and fully functioning solution
- Develop a working demonstration to show its capabilities
- Develop software components and building blocks (software libraries, hardware design, system configurations)
- Open source the idea, plans, methods and software libraries
- Broadcast the idea, get organisations involved
- Deliver a device that can do the job and is afforable for everyone
There is a path from idea to a working solution that has to be discovered. This requirers significant effort and expertise. I hope people will step in to join. Organisations can join to and decide to contribute to he project or step out at some time and continue on their own. All for the greater good of mankind and ethernal glory.
You can find the plan in the project wiki a link to the prsentation pdf , ongoing activities in project. Any help is welcome.
How can we make driving safer for every one?
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ4w63wZyFQ"><img align="right" width="350" title="click to start video" src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/uJ4w63wZyFQ/0.jpg"/><a> Its so easy to get distracted when your loved on sits next to you in the car or when you start day dreaming. The "Driver Coach" is a smart system installed in your car that will provide feedback just like any regular driving coach. The system is based on sensors and machine learning to monitor the driver's behaviour during a road trip. It will evaluate how you act as a driver in specific circumstances. For example how you prepare for a turn by checking your mirrors. It will also monitor for driver drowsiness and warn you to take a break.
Note: the video shows Rick August and his safe driving instruction video's. We cannot put a Rick next to every driver. But we try to provide useful feedback to every driver Rick August: Smart Drive Test video
The business case
Each year traffic accidents in the Netherlands with 6.8 million cars cost about 600 lives, 30.000 injuries and 17 billion euro. Each fatal accident costs 1,5 million euro and each serious accident about 250.000 euro.
Currently most car lease and insurance companies focus on reduction of aggressive driving habits (speeding or hard breaking). They provide their customers with Apps that use Smartphone sensors for tracking vehicle location and acceleration. But this approach does not cover all aspects (distraction,drowsiness and driving maneuvers) and is therefore less effective to reduce accidents. Drivers usually know when they have aggressive driving habits. and aggressive drivers are usually not willing to change their habits. But cautious drivers are the majority and they are willing to learn and improve their driving skills in order to make their life safer. From a safety perspective the driver is better helped with a system that monitors driver alertness, warns them in potential dangerous situations and provides useful feedback for improving driving skills. This will reduce their chance of getting into an accident with 57 percent.
How can we get the best for everyone? Companies that care about social responsibility to their customers should consider all previous arguments and design a system that provides real benefits for their customers. Such a system is however more complex and costly to develop and implement. An open source solution might be helpful to reduce cost if its flexible enough to be adapted to specific requirements.
So the main question is: How can we develop an affordable and flexible solution that provides benefits for all
|Consumer|Business case| |----------|-----------| |* Promote safe driving habits|* Car lease (safety as a service, reduce car accidents) | * Improve safe driving behaviour|* Insurance (reduce car accidents) | * Help to prevent car accidents|* Road service organizations (safety for its members) | * Make Driver Monitoring systems available for low cost|* Driving school (better feedback, better results) | * Lower costs for society| | * While keeping privacy|
A good starting point to introduce this system would be driving schools. They could use these devices in their daily practice and lend them to their customers when they practice under parental supervision. By lending them to young drivers on training, consumers will getting used to these devices and this will lead to general acceptance.
How to get user acceptance
I think the biggest challenge is to convince people to use these kind of systems. Acceptance depends on two factors: how effective it is in making driving safe and if we can trust the system behind it. The effectiveness has to be proven with field trials and the results must be verified and reported to the public.
We all have our thoughts on devices that observe us especially when we are making errors. Everything the system does should therefore be crystal clear: <img align="right" width="300" src="https://github.com/Tauvic/DriverAwareness/blob/master/doc/Crystal-clear.jpg"/>
- How does it work
- What kind of data is being processed
- How does it make its decisions (criteria)
- What will be done with conclusions
- Who owns this data and has control over it
- Can i put my trust in this system
Everyone has to make up their own mind and decide:
Do I want to assess and improve my driving skills in order to make driving safe for myself and the people around me.
I personally hope that we can make driving safer. My wife lost her father in a road accident and every life is valuable and worth saving.
To get user acceptance I propose to publish the general design of the system so people can understand how it works and what it does. A further assurance might be an independent auditor or trustworthy organisation, auditing the final product and a statement that the product does what is promises.
How to develop and implement
How the system works
<img align="right" width="300" src="https://github.com/Tauvic/DriverAwareness/blob/master/doc/driver-monitoring.jpg"> When a driver enters the car he/she is automatically recognized with face recognition. During the trip the system continuously determines the actual driving situation (parked, cruising, braking, turning) and evaluates the drivers activity and behaviour. It provides an audible warning when the driver gets tired and requires a break. It immediately alerts the driver when a dangerous situation occurs, such as changing direction without signaling or texting while driving.
After each trip the system sends a summary to the driver's smartphone for quick review. When at home specific situations can be reviewed in depth with the Driving Coach App. The App will show snapshots or short video with detailed data and advise for improvement.
The collected data is kept on the device under full control of the driver and can be deleted when required. Data can be shared with selected parties for specific applications such as an insurance company or a safe driver leader board where drivers can compare themselves with other drivers.
Following a step by step approach
The plan is to setup a demo to verify its feasibility, then to develop a prototype for field testing to investigate its effectiveness.
Developing a driver monitoring system is not a trivial task, and there are several ways to get there. The easiest is of course just to buy such a system from a reliable supplier or develop one using a toolkit. But this may be expensive or not suit your needs. And how do you get the expertise to choose the right solution? I decided to try to develop one myself to see how far I can come. Its an inte
