Many of us have had to go through the practical test when taking our driver's license, and in most countries it works the same way: we drive while a teacher looks in detail at everything we do to, in the end, give your verdict.
That instructor who watches us from the passenger seat, judging and controlling, is capable of making any person nervous, and it seems that his days are numbered: In India they will begin to replace him with an app created by Microsoft Research.
It is an application that can monitor driver performance with a smart phone. They just have to put the cell phone in the car and let the student do the exam. The app is responsible for saying whether it has done it right or wrong.
Its name is HAMS (Harnessing AutoMobiles for Safety) project, and it allows the front camera of the mobile to see and control the driver, while the rear camera can control the road, other vehicles and traffic. The HAMS application also takes advantage of the large number of sensors included in smartphones, such as the accelerometer, for example, to find out if there are too many brakes, or the GPS to control the speed of the vehicle at all times.
At the moment HAMS can assess driver performance with the help of simple tracking markers set up around a closed test loop. These markers are recognized by the smart phone camera and can be used to accurately measure the location of the vehicle and how close it is to obstacles that the driver must avoid.
Now they are working so that it can be used in non-closed circuits, where it will have to take into account the innumerable additional variables of streets and highways, but at the moment the system is already valid for the many countries where said examination is carried out in controlled environments.
The objective is to be fair, without opinions or results that depend on the humor of the examiner. The app cannot be bribed, and the data obtained does not lie.
