Imagine you are travelling from Chittagong to Dhaka in a night coach. The bus driver, who has 13 years of experience driving in this route, had a very long day. Now after the entire day's hard work he must drive the 40-sitter bus to the destination 300 KMs away. Wouldn't it be great if there was a system/device that would make sure

that the driver does not doze off or get distracted? Well, then I have good news for you because researchers from Dhaka University has come up with a really cool innovation.

Behold: Driver Distraction Management System! The name is almost self-explanatory. This system takes in account of almost everything:

facial expressions, blood pressure, heart rate, drowsiness, consumption of alchohol, cellphone chatter of the driver and also the engine status. Whenever there is a red flag on any of these, the system will alert the driver. Moreover the owner will be getting a notification SMS as well. In case the car falls in to an accident, there is an SOS button which the driver can activate.

The most amazing thing about this device is that the recorded responses are stored online in a cloud platform. The platform can be accessed remotely using a login ID and password anytime. So the vehicle remains monitored all the time.

Hardware:

A digital Sphygmomanometerr, GPS, some sensors, webcam and some unique algorithms - these are the key ingredients of this unique gadget. And it would take only about BDT 20-25,000/- cost at most.

The team & their story

Dr. Md. Abdur Razzaque, Associate Prof, of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Dhaka University, the team lead of this project came up with the idea about this gadget 2 years back. Under his active guidance, a group of talented students from the Department of Computer

Science and Engineering of Dhaka University- Amit, Tamai, Sakib and Nusrat worked days and nights to develop this system. Dr Razzaque, how he came up with this project, disclosed to BYTES: "The headlines of newspapers were filled with street mishap news. It was so frustrating to see. Seeing this is an important issue that we need to address, we devised a plan to come up with a gadget that could prevent these." He also added: "The system that we developed will tty to minimize death tolls and damage of properties. In addition to that, vehicle owners and law enforcing organizations will be able to keep tabs on the current position and condition of each of the vehicles. Driver recruiting agencies will be able to assign efficient and capable drivers. Insurance claims can now be solved much faster, thanks to our device!"

Dr. Razzaque's project was well appreciated abroad as well.

Information Society Innovation Fund of Brisbane found his project full of potential hence decided to fund AUSD 30,000/- "With this funding we were able to develop die prototypes of the device. Not only that, the project managed to secure 11th place amongst the selected 209 projects" said Dr. Razzaque.

Very recently, Dr. Razzaque introduced the device to various academician, transport service owners and government officials in seminar held in Dhaka University. Chief Guest of the workshop, honorable secretary ICT found the device really inspiring and assured that the project will be having full cooperation from his side to implement a commercial version of the device. Already Shohag Paribahan has started to deploy these devices on test basis. Let's hope the streets of the country get a bit safer than before.

( Shahriar Rahman