DriveAlive

IR LED flash-light
App is analysing user's eyes
App says that it's too much to have 2 drivers at the same time :)

Inspiration

Long night drives are neither easy nor safe. Having faced this problem personally and failed to find reliable solution, we decided to tackle it by ourselves!

What it does

DriveAlive automatically identifies moments of falling asleep and wakes you up with a sharp sound alarm. What's more, it continuously measures your drowsiness level and recommends to take rest when you're tired.

How we built it

We used face recognition technique to detect any periods when user's eyes are closed for more than 0.5 second. Also based on frequency and latency of blinking we make a recommendation whether driver need to have some rest.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was to make the application work at night in full darkness when there is no light and phone camera can't detect driver's eyes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We succeeded in solving the challenge of recognizing the face in full darkness with building a self-made flash-light with infra-red diodes (IR LEDs) whose light spectrum is invisible for human eyes but can be seen by smartphone.

What we learned

The problem that causes deaths of thousands of people every year can be solved with a usual smartphone's camera and doesn't not require buying a special equipment. The safety of driver and passengers can be significantly improved only with a use of one mobile app.

What's next for DriveAlive

To improve app's reliability it would be reasonable to add such features as Road Marking and Lane Detection that are already available for premium-class cars but practically can be done for any customer having a smartphone.