In a city like Bengaluru, brazen road sense and severe bottle neck traffic are not alien concepts. But, if you’ve been cribbing about having to endure the lackadaisical approach of your driver, here’s some respite coming your way — especially if the man on the driver’s seat needs to be wary of not dozing off enroute. Four ‘city’ zens and PES Engineering students, Saahil Kamath, Aviral Joshi, Akshay Kumar C and Rahul B Prakash have conjured up a Drivers Distraction Alert System, a device that alerts the driver through prompt and loud vibrations, stopping him from going off track!
Attributing the idea to a chance encounter, Saahil begins, “We are four students who met each other while working together on a project supervised by professor Vinay. Over casual conversations, it struck us that we wanted to do something that would reduce road accidents, especially if it was from the driver’s part. One thing led to the other, and this is probably one of the by-products of a million experiments. The four students run a start-up, VISIO.AI, and conjured this driver drowsiness detection system sometime in mid-July. “The device is still a prototype model. And, we honestly have a lot of expectations from this. Given that at least a whopping 60 percent of car accidents from the driver’s end can be attributed to the lack of focus, this concept is something worth considering. The time used to blink one’s eyes is 1.5 seconds. If a driver blinks or had his eyes shut for more than that, alerts are sent. The same rule applies even if he yawns more than three times in a row,” shares Rahul. The device comes with a camera and a face recognition system, where the driver’s eye movement and the number of yawns taken are considered before sending out loud alerts. Since the boys believe in making this a feasible idea, they believe it’s important to keep the pricing reasonable. “We have just received a patent for the device. Since it’s for the overall safety and welfare, we wish to make it below Rs 10,000 with substantial discounts for school buses.”
Not the kind to glorify the start-up journey, Rahul concludes, “We believe a realistic device will find takers no matter what. But again, putting in 14 hours of work and attending college is not easy. We hardly have a concept called ‘free time’ but since we are all social animals, the product takes up our time.”
