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Digital Cameras Help Alert Sleepy Drivers
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Oct 21, 2004 02:20 AM
from the let-the-car-do-the-driving dept.
from the let-the-car-do-the-driving dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting story on how digital cameras are being mounted in cars to watch the eye movements of drivers to make sure that they are awake. The cars include two cameras, one watching the road and one watching the driver. If there is something on the road that is a danger and the driver doesn't see, the car alerts the driver. Pretty neat technology."
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heat waves? (Score:5, Interesting)
Will the camera wig out and think I'm driving into a huge puddle of water?
Re:heat waves? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cool intermediate technology (Score:5, Interesting)
We already have navigation systems that are accurate to within half a meter in many cities worldwide. We also have collision detection algorithms (aka hashing functions) that can help avoid crashing into other cars. We now can mount cameras onto vehicles to provide visual sensory input.
All we really need is an IR sensory input for fog driving.
In cities, this kind of "decide the destination" driving without the hassle of actually driving the vehicle would be really useful, I think.
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:5, Funny)
Great idea! We could call it Taxi!
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Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this technology in cars is that it assumes that cars are the only vehicles on the road. What about the pedal and motorcyclists for example?
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:3, Informative)
On top of that, a road train would very likely be more predictable - no speeding, no breaking the rules of the road. So bikes, cycles and pedestrians are less likely to be caught out by a car doing something stupid.
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Just stick on an IR camera and cars will be able to drive themselves? Nope, we're decades away from fully automated vehicles. Real roads are far far more complex than the test roads which they have been run on so far.
http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~janka/PATH/s
If you want fully automated vehicles right now, a segregated guideway is required, AKA Personal Rapid Transit.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/
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Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:4, Interesting)
e.g.
http://www.cvhas.org/
They use magnets embedded in the lane to determine position. The issues, what happens at the exit if the driver falls asleep? How do you handle unexpected situations like wildlife on the motorway? Who's at fault when an accident does happen, the manufacturer?
The other thing is that it's a relatively expensive and inefficient way to apply IT to transport, a kludge even. All the vehicles (millions of them eventually) would have to be retrofitted with kit, all the motorways would have to be retrofitted for it to be effective, it's an expensive and rather slow proposition.
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CarTrain (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the thing that ticks me off about all of this "Intelligent Hiway" crap - we KNOW how to build trains. We KNOW how to build railbeds capable of supporting 300MPH trains. We KNOW how to build rail cars that will hold automobiles. R&D? We need no "R" - the research is done, we just need the development.
However, since we DON'T need any research, nobody wants to look at this technology - it isn't "sexy". So everybody talks about building more intelligence into the car - but of course we will need a huge quantity of money to fund research for those pesky problems like actually dealing with the one driver who's car is NOT on full automatic drive who INSISTS upon getting into that lane.
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The big problem with trains... (Score:4, Insightful)
What this means is that they have to stop at every station on the route in the offchance that someone wants to get on or off. This makes it slow, the average speed is only a fraction of their peak or rated speed. Because they are group vehicles they also have to run to a schedule which means that you have to wait for a train. Both features make journey times significantly longer than an individual vehicle would take.
Also, because the rolling stock is carrying a large group, it is heavy and relatively few of them are built which means no mass manufacture. The supporting infrastructure must also be heavy to cope with the size of the vehicle. This makes it expensive.
Ok, you've got me started now. Group vehicles also simply can't go where everyone wants to go, their ridership is only the few percentage of the population who are with in easy reach of a station. If you add more stations to increase the number of people who use it the trains have to spend more time stopped and average speed suffers further making it slower. Because they don't go exactly where you want to go you have to switch modes or lines, each time you switch you incur a journey time penalty waiting on the schedule.
Scheduled vehicles have to run whether there are people to use it or not, this kills the overall efficiency, the vehicles are heavy, accelerating them and decelerating them takes a lot of energy. During rush hour the ridership is such that it's very efficient. As soon as you get outside the rush hour period and the ridership falls so does the efficiency.
So you end up paying a lot for relatively poor performance.
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Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:3, Insightful)
JFK's vision cost America 5% of it's GDP.
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine an autonomous vehicle that has to do about 10 decisions a second (this is not enough, but this helps clear matters). If your system is 99.99% accurate this means an error every 1000s, i.e. every 15 minutes or so. You wouldn't be able to drive very far.
There are no real-world intelligent decision systems that ar
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:3, Interesting)
major cause[s] of death and destruction on the road
Whilst I agree that some breaking of the speed limit is obviously dangerous (e.g. going >60mph in a 30 zone) I disagree that a strict adherence to the speed limit is necessarily good or safe.
For instance, going 40 (in a 30 limit) on a clear straight road, on a bright Sunday afternoon is probably going to be safer than doing 30 on a rainy Monday morning, down a winding road in front of a school, despite the fact that the
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cool intermediate technology (Score:5, Informative)
Speeding isn't a major cause. 7% at most, in fact 80% of accidents happen within the limit. Far more important factors: Drunk, tired, distracted (eg mobile phone) and plain stupidity.
We could have fully automated vehicles today. Just not on the roads, they are too complex. There are already systems which can do the job:
http://www.skywebexpress.com/
http://www.atslt
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Privacy concerns (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see the obvious saftey benefit from this, but perhaps the possible privacy conerns should be considered.
Suppose this follows a logical step and they add a link to a centralized server that monitored traffic volume to help the results be more accurate.
Suppose insurance companies were able to gain access to data this could produce, and started factoring your on-road alertness into their rate
Yano on second thought, that doesn't sound that bad at all.
Re:Privacy concerns (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Privacy concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
And why shouldn't they? If you drive half-asleep/drunk/retarded, your rates *should* go up, and insurance companies should be able to access any relevant info about your driving habits in order to determine your rates.
It's getting to the point where simply being inconspicuous with deviant/dangerous behavior is no longer sufficient to avoid the consequences, and I say good. I think that if you drive drunk, or speed, or drive erratically, you should get a ticket regardless of whether or not a cop happens to be present at the time. And yes, I'm talking about equipping cars with devices that can detect such crimes. Too many people confuse this with an issue of privacy or civil rights, but I don't believe it to be. Such a thing would merely serve to lift the veil of obscurity that many people tend to hide behind as they threaten the lives of those around them.
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Re:Privacy concerns (Score:3, Informative)
Say you're on a two lane road (that is one lane in each direction) which allows overtaking. You're stuck behind someone going lower than the speed limit. You go to over take them (assume its a truck going up a hill) and the cars are backed up behind you.. What happens is car behind you moves into your space and you're stuck ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. In this situation the safest thing to do is to 'feed it the fat' (jump on the gas for a
Re:Privacy concerns (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Privacy concerns (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Privacy concerns (Score:3, Interesting)
Digital camera kept me awake! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd then break out my digital camera and take pictures of the road, myself, buildings, etc. I'd also set it on my dashboard and do a long exposure image to catch the headlights of cars and city lights (for a cool streaking effect). I had a lot of fun and it kept me awake.
Was it dangerous? Nah. I can operate my camera without looking at it really, so I was able to keep my eyes on the road (and keep them open).
Alerts you to dangerous things on the road? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if only they can devise a way to keep 85 year olds who think that it's their god given right to drive until the day they die, from slamming on the gas and destroying buildings and killing pedestrians because they thought it was the break pedal - or driving into THROUGH AN AIRPORT because they thought you return your car at the Hertz inside the airport.
Re:Alerts you to dangerous things on the road? (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, lots of people got stories like this, so I'll throw in mine. I know a girl that used to work in a big supermarket with an in-door garage. If you ever worked as a wrapper you know you sometimes go and help people get stuff in their car. A car was backing out
Hmmmmmmmmmm (Score:3, Funny)
Wonder how it determines what is a danger (Score:3, Interesting)
but the terrorists! (Score:3, Funny)
Glasses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Better or Worse? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I can see it could save a life if a so called "micro sleep" occured at the wheel but could it have the opposite effect? Would some people then try to drive longer thinking they have a safety net/alarm clock to wake them up if they drift off?
Re:Better or Worse? (Score:5, Informative)
They had taken a dozen of drivers fitting a particular set of criteria. They had to be used to driving at night, and drive a certain mileage every week.
They rigged them up with monitoring equipment, set a couple of night vision cameras in the car and sent them on their way.
They had to drive a distance that was estimated to take about 4h.
Once at the destination a team of boffins would ask them to fill in a questionaire about how they felt about the drive, whether they felt tired, etc.
The results were simply scary:
None of them had bothered to take a break.
None of them declared having felt tired enough to feel they had to take a break.
Yet their brain activity was showing numerous periods that looked like deep sleep for less than 5 seconds.
On average these periods amounted to a whooping 6 minutes over the 4h of driving.
On the videos you could just see the drivers blinking for a unusually long time.
Having a system that detects that I'm blinking in a suspicious way, gets the driver seat to vibrate, and then sound an alarm if I don't open my eyes immediately would certainly not annoy me. I'd take the hint that I need to take the next exit and try to grab 1/2h of sleep.
My sister fell asleep at the wheel once while on the motorway and told us that she had only blinked, only to open her eyes after feeling what she described as a bump.
She took the next exit because she was feeling seriously tired and slightly puzzled about the "bump". Turned out she had hit the safety rail after drifting all the way over the fast lane.
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Re:Better or Worse? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is called risk compensation or behavioural adaptation, if you look at things like accident rates before and after seat belts have been made complusory you find that while fatalities for those in cars decrease it is not at the level predicted by statistics, and fatalities for pedestrians and cyclists acutally increase..
Basically people feel safer so they drive faster/aren't as careful.
The interesting thing is that the effect is stro
Re:Better or Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought that an interesting experiment would be to remove the driver's seatbelt and fix a large spike to the steering wheel. I suspect the number of accidents would go down ;-)
Dave
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Complacency (Score:5, Interesting)
So it gives you a false sense of security, but like all computer equiptment, you ignore it the seconed it gets too annoying.
How many times has a car alarm gone off, and you rush outside to apprehend the thieves?
This sounds too much like a tax funded project gone awry. Perhaps the car might have a failsafe mode if the triggers go too far? if the person doesn't hit an ok button in enough time, the car should slow calmly and require some special intervention to make sure the user is aware.
Now any action on the part of a computer that would remove the human from the loop is not desirable, as this would mean a car might slow in the middle of a 5 lane intersection, or something stupid.
But if humans take themselves out of the loop through complacency, then that is worse.
The camel sticks his nose under the tent... (Score:3)
Be afraid. The future is now, and it does not like you or your silly privacy rights.
This is great and all.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeat with me (Score:4, Insightful)
It wont work! (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in the UK Volvo drivers have a bad name with motorcyclists. Why? Because they are very safe cars and so many Volvo drivers take less care than someone in a less safe car. But cars aren't the only thing on the road and it's all well and good you being safe in your car if you're involved in an accident but what about the other poor sod!
Actually the best thing to make everyone drive safely and wear seat belts and the like is to put a spike in the centre of the steering wheel!
Re:It wont work! (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is why bikers in general (there are sadly a LOT of exceptions to this rule) are not as prone to accidents as people in general (the non-biking public, as it were) might imagine. We're too close to the road to not notice it rushing by at break-neck speeds. I believe it's best said in Zodiac [wikipedia.org] where a bicyclist, all dressed up in black, is asked why he doesn't have any lights or flourescent clothing and he responds with "For that to work, I'd have to assume every motorist around me is wide awake, sober and not trying to kill me. That's stupid. I pretend there's a million dollar bounty on my head and everyone's trying to hit me. It's my responsibility to make sure they don't." and there's a certain amount of truth in it. That and the spike works for me. :-)
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Citroën already does that (sort of) (Score:4, Interesting)
Bad move (Score:4, Insightful)
What? This is not neat. This is a step backwards. If drivers gets accustomed that their car will alert them if they're about to hit something, it will probably encourage them to contiue that extra hour of unsafe driving.
Another safety feature - all nice and well, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with all these safety features is that people feel too safe in their cars.
Going to fast? My wonderfull ABS system will bring me to a halt no matter what. Accelerating beyond my limits? Why, ASC will keep me on track. DSC will keep me on the road in those nasty corners. The new Citroen C5 has that nifty lane departure alert system, so why would I even keep my hands on the wheel, my car'll tell me when I'm flying off the road just in time!
Ok, ok, maybe I'm exagerating things a bit here, but you wouldn't believe the number of people that actually believe this stuff (or at least appear to be driving as if they believe it).
IMHO, the driver is and should always be responsible for his/her car, not some autopilot. People should be made aware of the risks of ignoring these systems more, than they should be made aware of situations they should've seen for themselves.
Know the limits of yourself. Know the limits of your car. If you go beyond either of those, no system out there now nor in future will keep you on the road.
Stuff like this scares the crap out of bikers (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount of technology designed to let the car driver fall asleep is terrifying to those who actually have something to loose from an accident.
Hard times for men (Score:4, Funny)
Some more "unconventional" methods (Score:4, Interesting)
This is pretty scary. (Score:3, Interesting)
The folks talking about automatic driving systems are also pretty unrealistic. Vision systems in use in manufacturing environments are notriously touchy and difficult to keep running, even with proper illumination and constrat control.
This will be used as a law enforcement tool. Those people who stop driving when they grow tired will continue to do so, and those that don't will disable the system and continue to drive, just like folks who refuse to wear seatbelts disable the idiot bell and light.
Again, no thanks.
Why not just drive and let me get back to sleep? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:French cars *are* innovative (Score:4, Informative)
Especcially Citroen seems to be at it. They used Headlights that shine into curves depending on how far you turn the steering wheel already in the 60s or 70s.
They were the first to use a very soft suspension (advertised with a car bumping over a freshly plowed field with raw eggs on the backseat. The eggs remained intact).
They built a hygropneumatic suspension that automatically stiffens the suspension. For example you drive a car speedily over a long hump, and the inertia lifts the car upwards, while the road begins to go down again. Now imagine a curve right after that. With a soft suspension the car will swing around with a lot of load-cycle changes, while the hygropneumatic suspension stiffens and keeps the car steady.
This in turn is an evolution of their suspension that adjusts the height of the car's rear so that you can easily load the trunk in a lowered car, and when startinging, it lifts the back up again compensating the load in the trunk.
Furthermore a lot of automobile companies (Opel, Volkswagen among them) used Peugeots Diesel-motor technology, since it is among the best engineered Dieselmotors.
And a few years back Peugeot made the HDI Diesel engine, that produced very high exhaust heat, so the carbon particles get burned, eliminating the black smoke from Diesel engines.
So, when do you think did the French cars stop being innovative?
P.S. I'm *not* French or something like that...
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