15-year-old Calgarian developing AI tool to help identify impaired drivers

A Calgary student is using his tech skills to develop an artificial intelligence tool to help identify impaired drivers.

Aryan Sharma is a 15-year old hockey fan who was heartbroken by the tragic deaths of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau – which motivated him to create the DU-Eye system.

“I wanted to figure out a way that this death could have been prevented,” he said. “I wondered if there was some type of solution and so I wanted to use my strengths in artificial intelligence and computer science to help solve that problem.”

Sharma says his model identifies a car’s trajectory, speed, lane detection, and proximity to other vehicles.

He adds that the program’s confidence threshold increases as it identifies more problematic behaviour, and it would then ideally inform police.

“Once all of the flags are ticked then the AI is like ‘OK, this is dangerous, I’m now going to send this to a human person to review the footage, to see if the AI is saying the truth, and then they will apprehend them.’”

He says the model has been successful in simulations, but real-world factors like bad weather and visibility still need to be improved, which could take a while, because he’s the only developer, and works on it in his spare time.

Sharma’s invention has received international attention, recently recognized at Intel’s Global AI festival – though he did receive some feedback about potential concerns.

“So currently with that feedback I’m kind of figuring out how to make my project so it still keeps the safety of people but minimizes privacy concerns to a very small extent,” he explained.

Sharma hopes to partner with the city and police to further develop his tool, with the ultimate goal of ending impaired driving.