Abstract Proposal

Title: Driver drowsiness detection

*Abstract:

-Creating a tool that detects drivers’ drowsiness and alerts them through their phones to help those drivers concentrate on the road.

*Background:

-Nowadays, many car accidents happen due to the fact that the drivers are drowsy while driving, especially truck drivers and teenagers. Scientific study estimates that 24-33% of all car accidents are contributed from drowsiness. Therefore, I want to create a tool that analyzes brainwave of drivers and integrates with motion detector to detect their drowsiness and connects to their phones through Bluetooth in order to provide warnings by sounds and notifications; more interestingly, the drivers’ phones can turn on a special library of music that makes them staying awake, or give suggestions such as the nearest café shop using Maps application, or recommend them to take a nap. Moreover, if the drivers are still drowsy, the car will automatically stop to prevent accidents that may happen (This last feature is possible; however, it will take a lot of time because it requires a deep knowledge about car mechanics. Therefore, this year, I am going to focus on other features only.)

-Because most of the car accidents are caused by truck drivers and teenagers, the truck companies and the teenagers' parents will be my main market customers . For the truck companies, they want to insure their drivers' safety in order to ship things fast and carefully. For the teenagers' parents, they want to make sure that their kids are safe all the time, especially when they are driving on the road by themselves.

*Purpose:

-My purpose is to make this tool work successfully in order to decrease car accidents. The more successful the tool is, the more people will buy it and so the more lives will be saved.

*What will I measure?

-I need to collect numbers and graphs of 6-10 different people’s brainwaves while they are drowsy. After that, I will study and combine those results into one algorithm. This will be the prototype to compare with other users’ brainwaves in order for my tool to know whether these users are drowsy or not.

*How will I measure it?

-I am going to use EEG devices (Neurosky, Muse, Emotiv) to look at the brainwave graph of 6-10 different people and collect the data. Then, I am going to build a tool that detects whether the state of a person matches to the state of drowsiness using the algorithm that I already have. After that, I am going to create a mobile’s application that receives the information from the tool in order to warn the users whenever they are drowsy.

*Tools/resources needed:

-Dr. Bill’s resources, Mr.H's programming skills, and a little bit knowledge about psychology (Psychology’s book and researches on the internet). These are very essential in order to make this project work: Dr. Bill’s resources help me to build the tool; I use programming skills to create the app for mobile phone; psychology helps me to know more about human’s conditions and their state of alertness.

*Impact:

-If I can make this tool work, it will help decrease car accidents and save the lives of many people. Therefore, this tool has a great social impact and it can be used across many countries.

*Legacy:

-I am going to try my best to finish this project this year. Otherwise, i would love to see other students who are interested in my project finishing what i have left behind. If they are done, they can test it and see how it works.