Inspiration
While driving from Ottawa, we had a truck driver drift into our lane almost causing an accident. After recollecting our thoughts, we realized that this must be a bigger problem that others have experienced and began our research.
We found that in 2012, around 3900 people were killed in road accidents involving trucks and sleepy truck drivers, and another 104000 people were injured in the U.S. alone.
There's got to be a way to combat this.
What it does
We were able to come up with a solution that monitors the brain activity and physical state of truck drivers and alerts them in times of loss of concentration to keep the roads safer.
How we built it
DriveSafe consists of 2 major components: The Muse headband and a Pebble watch. The muse headband gets EEG readings from the brain through 4 sensors and classifies it to alpha, beta, delta, gamma and theta waves in real time. The data is backed up on a cloud for further analysis.
The program also collects data from Muses’ accelerometer, gyroscope, and blink detection. It serves to know the person’s head position at all times and if their eyes are shut.
The algorithms we’re using monitor concentration, blinking rate and closed eyes, and relative head position to send alerts through the pebble
Challenges we ran into
The hardware setup, while mostly simple, introduced a small challenge in the concentration measurement method.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In the grand picture, we're very proud to have produced a solution to such an important issue and one that can literally save lives.
What's next for DriveSafe
To optimize our algorithms to not only produce better tiredness and drowsiness detection, but to also use those algorithms and others to detect alcohol consumption, stress levels, and emotional state. Furthermore, to expand on the use of the Muse and the Pebble by using other hardware for eye detection and lane detection.
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