Indian company develops driver drowsiness detection system

The Gurgaon-based Hi-tech Robotic Systemz Ltd (THRSL) has developed an indigenous drowsiness alert system which will help reduce the threat of road accidents caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel. The safety device, named Novus Aware’, has been indigenously developed and manufactured and was displayed at Auto Expo 2016’s Components Show in the Innovation Pavilion. It has been selected in the innovative technology product category by ACMA. 

According to the company, the pre-launch display at the Auto Expo was aimed at testing the system for robustness and collecting user feedback for improved user experience. THRSL is understood to be already working with automobile manufacturers for installing a factory fitted version of the device. Novus Aware, says THRSL, is both suitable for cars as well as for fleet management companies. The system has the capability to send vehicle and driver attention data for central monitoring via the cloud. Essentially, Novus Aware is a vision-based system which detects the human face and analyses different facial expressions and cues like eye closure, abnormal blink frequency, head jerk and yawn to estimate the driver's attention level. It raises a warning in the form of acoustic, haptic or photonic signals if the attention level falls below a certain threshold. The system also generates warnings in case the driver is not looking straight ahead on the road and in the case of occluded camera.

The key innovation in the system is the development of a robust algorithm which makes the entire system perform exceptionally well even with very modest and cost effective hardware. The combination of efficient hardware along with the state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm has ensured that the system would perform well for the following variabilities: different illumination conditions (especially low light conditions), different users, different head and eye gears, and vibrations due to vehicle movement. The system can effectively differentiate between an eye blink and prolonged eye closure and generates a warning accordingly without any noticeable delay. The system can be entirely concealed in the vehicle dashboard. Hence, the user is not required to adjust camera placement and positioning according to driver height or driving position.

According to Global status report on road safety by World Health Organization, there were 1.25 million road traffic deaths worldwide in 2013, out of which 1,42,485 road traffic deaths happened in India. Therefore increasing safety standards would benefit the vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists) as well as the non-vulnerable road users and vehicles. A substantial percentage of road accidents occur due to driver inattentiveness and having an inexpensive yet efficient driving assistance warning system can prove to be of great advantage to overcome the loss of life and property.

On Indian roads, approximately 140,000 people die every year of road accidents, largely caused due to ignorance of safety norms and rules and poor driving habits. Also, drivers of medium and heavy commercial vehicles generally drive for over 12 hours at a stretch, which makes them prone to cause accidents.    

Speaking about Novus Aware, Anuj Kapuria, director and CEO, The Hi-tech Robotics Systemz Ltd, said: “The loss of life caused due to road accidents is very high and a majority of these accidents happen due to drowsiness and lack of attentiveness of the driver. Our device will reduce this anomaly and will bring down the loss of life and property. The system is undergoing tests and will be soon launched. We are doing factory fit for leading automobile companies and our retrofit variant will be a great asset for masses and fleet management companies.”

THRSL is engaged in the field of artificial Intelligence, intelligent systems, robotics and computer vision and has developed and commercialised a wide range of robotic products catering to the needs of defence, homeland security and industrial sectors.

Recommended: Made-In-India Automated Guided Vehicle makes news at Auto Expo