Imagine if you had to tell a family that their child was never coming home again...because a driver had a few too many drinks and they were too lazy to get a taxi? How would you feel if it was your child? Your brother, your parent, your best friend? Now imagine that you're the one who had a few drinks and thought...Home isn't too far. I'll make it without getting busted. While on the back streets worrying if the booze bus will catch you, you hit someone. How do you live with that for the rest of your life?
Acusensus, best known for its mobile phone detection cameras, is developing cameras that can detect drug and alcohol-affected drivers.
It says it plans to roll these out in Australia and overseas.
The Melbourne company is working with the Federal Office of Road Safety and Griffith University to develop AI-based technology that will measure the driver’s attentiveness, reaction time, control and determine impairment levels, all in real time.
Using driver behaviours like speeding, trajectory patterns, and lateral movements within lanes, the technology is able to send information to local police officers to enforce fines and take further action.
In a real-world deployment, the hardware can be placed anywhere at any time but will at first be tested in a stationary trailer a few hundred metres from police patrol cars.
The software uses a four-step process: deploy, capture, automated analysis and review.
At a very high level, the software will capture images of passing vehicles through a number of cameras, infra-red flash, lensing and a filtering system, and then feed it into an AI-based software that will detect potentially drug- or alcohol-affected drivers.
The system will then review and send the images to police officers for an in-person verification to determine if officers are required to pull over and test the affected driver.
