Road Buddy

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  main

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  permission_to_access_health_data

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  not_driving

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  awake_vibration_off

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  falling_asleep_vibration_on

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  vibration_logs

Inspiration

• From GM's challenge question, our aim is to achieve one of their vision of "Zero Crashes". Although it may be virtually impossible to completely eliminate all accidents, we concentrate on preventing those that could happen due to drowsy driving which accounts for over 20% of road accidents. Research showed when people get drowsy, their heart rate is reduced. We developed a Wear OS smartwatch app to send vibrations waking the user up when they're falling asleep while driving.

What it does

• Before the user starts driving, they open the app on their Android smartwatch then tap the Driving switch on.
• While driving, if the user falls asleep and their heart rate drops below the resting rate, the smart watch delivers a vibration to wake them up.

How we built it

• We used a Health Services API in Wear OS that could monitor heartbeats. The API measures the current heart rate from a synthetic data provider which we used to calculate the average heart rate. The app sends a vibration to the driver when current heart rate falls below the average.

Challenges we ran into

• It was our first time to use Android studio, Kotlin and develop Android Wear OS. We needed to learn many new technologies and how to work with Wear OS API.

What's next for Road Buddy

• The drop in heart rate can be caused by factors other than drowsy driving. To address this, we could record the users' other relevant health information to provide an accurate prediction of when they are sleeping.
• We can add voice alert to wake driver more effectively.
• The app can also use Google Maps API to send vibrations and alerts to drivers when they exceed the speed limits in areas with high accident rates or child protection zones.
• Also, we can use Google Maps API to send notices about the closest resting stop when the driver is feeling drowsy.
• In the future, this app can connect with the car system so autonomous driving mode will take over when the driver falls asleep.

GitHub Link:

https://github.com/aintic/RoadBuddy_HackMcWiCS

Built With

• android-studio
• android-wear
• health-service-api
• kotlin