Dashcam video monitoring platform with ‘artificial intelligence’ bonus aims at driver-rewards focus

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Updated Sep 16, 2016

The Netradyne company provided the above video as an example of some of what its newly-launched Driver-i platform is capable of in the area of on-highway video monitoring. Adam Kahn, current vice president of fleet business with the young company after a period with the SmartDrive video-monitoring and business intelligence service, notes the video shows the forward view of a hard-brake event in addition to the deep-learning artificial-intelligence capabilities of Driver-i’s underlying software.

netradyne_driver-i-hardwareThe Driver-i platform moves from the negative capability of the event-capture-and-coach model of other video-monitoring services to an approach that incorporates positive reinforcement and that the company believes emphasizes driver rewards. The platform combines an always-on front-facing camera and two side-view cameras (also an event-triggered interior driver camera) with machine learning technology to allow drivers at fleets utilizing the service to be graded on on-highway performance.

Its “deep learning” aspect, the company says, allows the system to monitor both moving and stationary objects around the vehicle such as motorists, pedestrians, signage, traffic lights, weather and road conditions. It can thus identify and make dynamic video records of risk due to aggressive driving as well as external conditions, including the conditions of the road and behavior of drivers around the truck.

During an online demonstration given to Overdrive and sister publication CCJ, NetraDyne showed how Driver-i is able to analyze a vehicle’s surroundings while a driver is moving at road speed. Lines and markings appear on the screen as the system identifies risk factors like a vehicle cutting in too close, just as a human driver would.

All of the processing that takes place looks like a fast-moving game of chess on the screen, as following distances, lane position, traffic lights and more factors come into play.

When it identifies critical safety events, video is sent to fleet management within minutes. Unlike other video safety systems, Driver-i is not just looking for risky triggers, such as a swerve in traffic or hard braking. Besides scoring driver behaviors that are unsafe, it also scores safe behaviors throughout the course of the day.

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Read more about the service in Aaron Huff’s story on the CCJ website.

Kahn says commercial availability of the software is just kicking off, but among installations the company already has planned is an outfitting of several owner-operator trucks at a fleet. A key point in driver acceptance of the system has been that it’s “collecting their good driving,” he notes. With other systems, the “only time they have a safety manager” contact them was “when something happened outside of the guidelines.” With Netradyne, Kahn adds, the safety manager equally likely to “recognize the good stuff they’re doing.”