SPLASH! You dropped off at the wheel for a split second, but a blast of cold
water in your face woke you up. The source? Not a broken windscreen washer, but
clever software called an 鈥渁rtificial passenger鈥�.
Developed by IBM, the artificial passenger, or AP, is designed to make long
solo journeys safer and more bearable by getting to know you, chatting to you,
choosing your music, telling you jokes鈥攁nd sounding alarms when you foul
up.
If you reckon there鈥檚 no need for such a thing, think again. Andrew Parks of
the Driving Simulation Centre at Britain鈥檚 Transport Research Laboratory in
Crowthorne, Berkshire, says up to 30 per cent of road traffic accidents are
thought to be caused by drowsy drivers. Researchers are striving to cut this
figure by developing in-car systems that detect tiredness before it鈥檚 too late,
such as one that uses cameras to monitor your eye movements for signs of sleepiness
(快猫短视频, 24 March, p 24).
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But IBM鈥檚 is a more thorough approach. Wlodek Wlodzimierz and Dimitri
Kanevsky of IBM鈥檚 T. J. Watson research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York, hope
their AP will keep you alert at the wheel by chatting to you鈥攁nd analysing
your responses.
The AP is not just some inflatable automaton that sits in the passenger
seat. It鈥檚 an intelligent presence packed into the dashboard electronics. The
heart of the system is a conversation planner that holds a profile of you,
including details of your interests and profession. When activated, the AP uses
the profile to cook up provocative questions such as, 鈥淲ho was the first person
you dated?鈥� via a speech generator and the in-car speakers.
Your answer is picked up by a microphone and broken down into separate words
by speech-recognition software. A camera built into the dashboard also tracks
your lip movements to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition. A voice
analyser then looks for signs of tiredness by checking to see if the answer
matches your profile. Slow responses and a lack of intonation are read as signs
of fatigue.
If you reply quickly and clearly, the system judges you to be alert and tells
the conversation planner to continue the line of questioning. If your response
is slow or doesn鈥檛 make sense, the voice analyser assumes you are dropping off
and wakes you up by opening a window, sounding a buzzer 鈥攐r spraying you
with icy water.
Another ploy the AP may try is to surprise the driver by switching radio
stations鈥攐r even telling a joke. IBM may need to brush up its humour,
however. The sample jokes in its AP patent are pretty bad: 鈥淭he stock market
just fell 500 points! Oh, I am sorry, I was joking.鈥�
But don鈥檛 despair. If a joke fails to raise a laugh, other drivers may be
spared it. 鈥淥ur system could be connected to many drivers via the Internet,鈥�
says Kanevsky. 鈥淚f the driver doesn鈥檛 laugh, the system will not repeat the joke
to others.鈥�
鈥淭here鈥檚 a real use in developing these types of systems,鈥� says Parks.
鈥淎ccidents from falling asleep tend to be serious.鈥� But Parks says that opening
a window or spraying water might not be enough to help. 鈥淭hese have only a
transient effect,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 best if people can pull over, have a quick
coffee, then get their head down in the half-hour before the caffeine kicks
颈苍.鈥�
Wlodzimierz says IBM is in talks with various car makers to discuss adopting
their system (US patent 6236968). 鈥淚f this is something people want, it鈥檚 doable
within three to five years,鈥� he says. As long as they come up with some decent
one-liners, that is.
