Microsoft Wants A Smartphone AI To Score Your Next Driving License Test

• Harnessing Automobiles for Safety (HAMS) will administer the driving test through a phone mounted on the windscreen.
• Will monitor both driver movements and vehicle trajectory to grade the student.
• Aims to eliminate the need for human evaluators and make sure every applicant goes through the testing process.

According to a survey of Indian drivers by the Save Life Foundation, 59% of the sample did not go through a driving test to obtain their license. Despite our appalling road accident statistics, India is notorious for having the world’s least comprehensive driving tests and inadequate education about driving and traffic rules. New circuit-based timed tests are attempting to change the situation, but what if you could take the test on a circuit, but with your smartphone as the administrator? Microsoft Research India has developed HAMS, or Harnessing AutoMobiles for Safety, a driver monitoring system which uses your phone to monitor you and the road. An AI-based testing procedure, HAMS uses several parameters to judge the abilities of the student driver. It is currently being implemented at the Regional Transport Office at Dehradun, Uttarakhand, for driver’s license exams.  

India’s problem of driver education and evaluation has long been the subject of experimentation. In Delhi, for example, the test involves driving around a circuit lined with traffic cones within a designated time period. The HAMS testing procedure is also circuit-based. It measures not just the way the vehicle is moving but also the time taken for each manoeuvre by the driver. It monitors the driver’s gaze and distance from obstacles. 

HAMS was developed in 2016 by Venkat Padmanabhan, then-intern Akshay Nambi, and Satish Sangameswaran. They are now respectively the Deputy Managing Director, Senior Researcher, and Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Research India. To use the driver monitoring project for driver’s license testing, the company partnered with the Institute of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR), a joint venture between Maruti Suzuki India Limited and state departments of transport. 

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At the end of a HAMS driving test, the student gets a detailed report of their performance shortly after completing the circuit. He or she can also watch a video of the exam to see if the system treated them fairly. According to Akshay Nambi, 50 students take the test at the Dehradun RTO each day. Unfortunately, only half the drivers pass the test. Microsoft Research claims that HAMS will significantly help to bring down the cost of automated driver testing and help make our roads safer by ensuring that only trained drivers are allowed to take the wheel.