Skip to main content

Driving license tests just got smarter in India with Microsoft’s AI project

An American giant may have figured out a way to simplify the tedious procedure of issuing driver’s licenses. And an early sneak peek of this solution is now live in parts of India.

Hundreds of people who have taken the driver’s license test in Dehradun, the capital of Indian state Uttarakhand near the Himalayan foothills, in recent weeks haven’t had to sit next to an instructor.

Instead, their cars were affixed with a smartphone that was running HAMS, an AI project developed by Microsoft Research team. HAMS uses a smartphone’s front and rear cameras and other sensors to monitor the driver (their gaze), and the road ahead of them. Microsoft Research team said for driver tests, they customized HAMS to enable precise tracking of a vehicle’s trajectory during test manoeuvres such as parallel parking or negotiating a roundabout.

This AI technology can determine whether the driver performed any action — such as stopping in the middle of a test or course correcting by rolling forward or backward more times than they were allowed — during the test, the team said. Additionally, it also checks things like whether a driver scanned their mirrors before changing the lane.

Shri Shailesh Bagauli, IAS, Secretary of Government of Uttarakhand, said the deployment of HAMS-based driver license testing at the Dehradun RTO is a “significant step towards the Transport Department’s goal of providing efficient, world-leading services to the citizens of Uttarakhand. We are proud to be among the pioneers of the application of AI to enhance road safety.”

HAMS, short for Harnessing AutoMobiles for Safety, was originally developed to monitor drivers and their driving to improve road safety. “Driver training and testing are foundational to this goal, and so the project naturally veered in the direction of helping evaluate drivers during their driving test,” the team said.

Automation is slowly making its way to driver testing across the world, but they still require deployment of extensive infrastructure such as pole-mounted video cameras along the test track. Microsoft’s team said HAMS can bring down the cost of automation while improving test coverage by including a view within the vehicle.

Some surveys (PDF) have shown that a significant number of applicants don’t even show up to give a test to obtain their license because of the “burden” they would have to go through. “Automation using HAMS technology can not only help relieve evaluators of the burden but also make the process objective and transparent for candidates,” says Venkat Padmanabhan, Deputy Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, who started the HAMS project in 2016.

The test venue of this project should not come as a surprise. American technology companies are increasingly expanding their presence in India, one of the last great growth markets with several unique local challenges.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have used India a a test bed to build solutions for the local market, some of which eventually make it to other countries. Microsoft has previously developed tools to help farmers in India increase their crop yields and worked with hospitals to predict LASIK surgery success. Last year, the company also worked with cricket legend Anil Kumble to develop a tracking device that helps youngsters analyze their batting performance.

Google has also developed a range of services and tools for India. The company last year launched a tool to help publishers easily bring stories written in local languages to the web. This year, the Android-maker unveiled improvements it has made to its flood prediction tool. And of course, several popular apps such as YouTube Go, and Google Station started as India-only services.



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2N1R0dz

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How To Play Doom – And More – On An NES

Doom was a breakthrough game for its time, and became so popular that now it’s essentially the “Banana For Scale” of hardware hacking. Doom has been ported to countless devices, most of which have enough processing ability to run the game natively. Recently, this lineup of Doom-compatible devices expanded to include the NES even though the system definitely doesn’t have enough capability to run it without special help. And if you want your own Doom NES cartridge, this video will show you how to build it . We featured the original build from [TheRasteri] a while back which goes into details about how it’s possible to run such a resource-intensive game on a comparatively weak system. You just have to enter the cheat code “RASPI”. After all the heavy lifting is done, it’s time to put it into a realistic-looking cartridge. To get everything to fit in the donor cartridge, first the ICs in the cartridge were removed (except the lockout IC) and replaced with custom ROM chips. Some modifica...

Try NopSCADlib for your Next OpenSCAD Project

Most readers of this site are familiar by now with the OpenSCAD 3D modeling software, where you can write code to create 3D models. You may have even used OpenSCAD to output some STL files for your 3D printer. But for years now, [nophead] has been pushing OpenSCAD further than most, creating some complex utility and parts libraries to help with modeling, and a suite of Python scripts that generate printable STLs, laser-ready DXFs, bills of material, and human-readable assembly instructions complete with PNG imagery of exploded-view sub-assemblies. Recently [nophead] tidied all of this OpenSCAD infrastructure up and released it on GitHub as NopSCADlib . You can find out more by browsing through the example projects and README file in the repository, and by reading the announcement blog post on the HydraRaptor blog . Some functionality highlights include: a large parts library full of motors, buttons, smooth rod, et cetera many utility functions to help with chamfers, fillets, precis...

The Newbie’s Guide To JTAG

Do you even snarf? If not, it might be because you haven’t mastered the basics of JTAG and learned how to dump, or snarf, the firmware of an embedded device. This JTAG primer will get you up to snuff on snarfing, and help you build your reverse engineering skills. Whatever your motivation for diving into reverse engineering devices with microcontrollers, JTAG skills are a must, and [Sergio Prado]’s guide will get you going. He starts with a description and brief history of the Joint Test Action Group interface, from its humble beginnings as a PCB testing standard to the de facto standard for testing, debugging, and flashing firmware onto devices. He covers how to locate the JTAG pads – even when they’ve been purposely obfuscated – including the use of brute-force tools like the JTAGulator . Once you’ve got a connection, his tutorial helps you find the firmware in flash memory and snarf it up to a file for inspection, modification, or whatever else you have planned. We always apprec...