Artificial Passenger

Abstract

An artificial passenger (AP) is a device that would be used in a motor vehicle to make sure that the driver stays awake. IBM has developed a prototype that holds a conversation with a driver, telling jokes and asking questions intended to determine whether the driver can respond alertly enough. Assuming the IBM approach, an artificial passenger would use a microphone for the driver and a speech generator and the vehicle’s audio speakers to converse with the driver. The conversation would be based on a personalized profile of the driver. A camera could be used to evaluate the driver’s “facial state” and a voice analyzer to evaluate whether the driver was becoming drowsy. If a driver seemed to display too much fatigue, the artificial passenger might be programmed to open all the windows, sound a buzzer, increase background music volume, or even spray the driver with ice water. Conversational Interactivity for Telematic speech systems can significantly improve a driver-vehicle relationship and contribute to driving safety. But the development of full fledged Natural Language Understanding (NLU) for CIT is a difficult problem that typically requires significant computer resources that are usually not available in local computer processors that car manufacturer provide for their cars. To address this, NLU components should be located on a server that is accessed by cars remotely or NLU should be downsized to run on local computer devices (that are typically based on embedded chips).

Keywords: telematics, microphone, voice analyzer