Several automakers offer features where a camera inside a vehicle monitors the driver and sets off alerts when it detects them starting to fall asleep. Researchers have developed an even smarter in-car camera system that can figure out exactly what a driver is doing, potentially improving the safety of semi-autonomous driving features.
The new system uses AI-powered image recognition to construct a digital skeleton of the driver that provides enough details for the system to interpret what exactly the driver is doing, while additional object recognition keeps tabs on the location of items like smartphones or coffee cups.
When the two systems are paired, a vehicle is able to determine if a driver is paying attention to the road, or distracted with other activities like texting, eating, or even interacting with other passengers in the vehicle. By keeping tabs on what the driver is doing, a semi-autonomous driving system can determine how distracted they are, and potentially how long it will take them to return their focus to driving, and take that into account before handing control of the vehicle back to them.
Read the article at MSN.