A University of North Texas professor has come up with a way to make the daily commute safer and easier. Dr. Ram Dantu developed a program called Mobile Life Guard that alerts drivers of bad road conditions and bad driving.
"Every day, I actually commute one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening," Dantu said. "I see the people lane hopping and so many different accidents."
Dantu came up with a way to make roads safer. The Mobile Life Guard program senses road conditions and then gives the driver feedback on how they handled the situation.
"It can easily tell them, 'you are making a wrong lane change, you are making a hard breaking, or the turning is not smooth,'" Dantu said.
The program combines the vehicle's on-board computer system with the user's smart phone to analyze driving behavior and road conditions. It then alerts the user if there are unsafe conditions.
"Like if the surface of the road is even. Are there any road bumps? Are there any pot holes?" Dantu said.
Dantu received a $50,000 dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the program. The first phase will focus on individual cars and their driver, but the second phase will go beyond that. Eventually, it will keep an eye on neighboring drivers.
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The trial version of Mobile Life Guard will launch at the first of the year.
