American and Japanese researchers are developing a smart car
that will help drivers avoid accidents by predicting when they are about to make
a dangerous move. The smart car of the future will be able to
tell if drivers are going to mm, change lanes, speed up, slow down or pass
another car. If the driver’s intended action could lead to an
accident, the car will activate a warning system or override the move.
(111) "By shifting the emphasis of car safety away from design of the
vehicle itself and looking more toward the driver’s behavior, the developers
believe that they can start to build cars that adapt to suit people’s
needs," New Scientist magazine said. Alex Pentland of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology collaborated on the project with Andrew
Lin who works for the Japanese carmaker Nissan. (112) Tests
of their smart car using a driving simulator have shown that it is 95 percent
accurate in predicting a driver’s move 12 seconds in advance.
(113) The system is based on driving behavior which the researchers say
can be divided into chains of sub-actions which include preparatory
moves. It monitors the driver’s behavior patterns to predict
the next move. "To make its predictions, Nissan’s smart car uses
a computer and sensors on the steering wheel, accelerator and brake to monitor a
person’s driving patterns. (114) A brief training session, in which the
driver is asked to perform certain maneuvers, allows the system to calculate the
probability of particular actions occurring in two-second time segments,"
the magazine said. Lin has also done work on tracking eye
movement to predict driving behavior. (115) He said the smart car could be
adapted to monitor eye movement which could give even earlier predictions of
when a driver is about to make a wrong move.