Falling asleep while behind the wheel isn’t as rare an occurrence as one might think, and it is very dangerous not just for the driver, but for the passengers in the car, and also other drivers on the road. In the past we have seen companies try to develop technology to detect sleepy drivers, and recently Panasonic is trying their hand at it as well.
The company has recently unveiled their own system which will actually rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to tell when a driver is falling asleep while driving. The AI will measure which state of drowsiness that you might be in, and based on that it will know what appropriate actions it can take to try and wake you up.
This is done by a camera that uses facial recognition to detect eyeblinks and expressions, like if your eyelids were to droop and blinking becomes slow, then there’s a good chance that you’re already falling asleep. There are also infrared sensors that tell how fast your body is losing heat. Based on all of this, the system can do a variety of things to wake the driver up, such as adjusting the lighting in the car and the temperature.
Now the good news is that this isn’t just a proof of concept as Panasonic actually plans to sell this system. The company is hoping that it will be ready in time for automakers by October, although we guess whether or not carmakers will adopt Panasonic’s technology remains to be seen.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Panasonic.