Client
Don’t Sleep is a mobile app to help you say awake while driving. Don’t Sleep uses face recognition to detect signs of sleepiness and fatigue, such as excessive yawning, rubbing your eyes, and closing your eyes. Once Don’t Sleep has determined that you are drowsy, it will sound an alarm on your phone to wake you up, and will advise you to take a break. This app integrates with many existing map applications such as Google Maps and Waze.
Business Need
According to a National Sleep Foundation’s sleep poll, 60% of Americans have driven while feeling sleepy and 37% admit to actually falling asleep at the wheel. Each year, sleepy drivers account for 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses (NHTSA). Our goal was to limit the number of deaths by creating an app that can keep drowsy people awake and to warn them to take a break. We are able to use the most commonly used item, their smart phone, and use it to keep people alive. With Don’t Sleep, users are able to simply install the app on their phone, use it alongside other applications they frequently use, and take it into any vehicle at any time.
Solution
Our application uses the front camera of your smartphone to recognize your face and eyes. When Don’t Sleep detects sleepiness and fatigue, the app triggers your smartphone to alarm you through audio and video signals, to wake you up or alert you to take a break. We have designed a specific algorithm to determine your face position, so Don’t Sleep will work on the left, right, or both sides of your eyes. To determine facial recognition at night, we have developed a slight blue/green light illuminated enough to recognize your face and position, but not light enough to impair your sight or vision.
Technologies Used
Timeline:
80+ man-months
Android OS:
Technologies: Java, Dalvik VM, Android SDK
Development Environment: Eclipse, Android Studio
iOS:
Used languages: Objective C
Technologies: iPhone applications development
Development Environment – XCode, Mac OS
Benefits
There are many benefits to Don’t Sleep, one of our primary reasons for designing the app (and also one of the major benefits) is that it can save many lives without any hassle for users. Don’t Sleep integrates with many navigation applications, so users can simply pull up their route and drive.
There are many other applications that can be developed for Don’t Sleep, such as using the back camera to determine whether or not you are drifting into another lane. This app is continually evolving, and it will only get better. Don’t Sleep works with all OS and devices, there is no need for SDKs or hardware changes on any device.
