NITRO STORY: Healthy Road, your reliable driving companion
Many of us have already been there. You are driving along linear roads or in the middle of the night and suddenly feel very tired. The most common solutions to tackle this problem is to drive carrying a talkative companion, listening to some loud music or, if the tiredness is prevailing, to stop somewhere safe and take a nap. These solutions could be soon out of fashion.
A startup from Portugal is now proposing a new technology to address this issue. Healthy Road is developing AI facial biometric tech for driver monitoring (DMS).
How does it work? The software’s main goal is to monitor the driver’s behavior and state in order to alert him in case of danger. The system can in fact recognize if the driver is able to take over the vehicle control after the autonomous driving mode and to alert the driver in case he is adopting a dangerous driving behavior. All in all, the Healthy Road technology provide a better user experience and support other sensors in the vehicle to take action if necessary.
The facial biometric software can process in fact in real time the stream from one single camera, in order to get facial features. Healthy Road aims to use this technology in vehicles in order to reduce accidents due to distraction and drowsiness.
The features of the software are already very promising and allow detecting different state of the driver. Using face movement detection and eye gaze, the software can detect a distraction or a loss of focus. Through eye analysis techniques, it is able to recognize drowsiness and using the blinking analysis the fatigue level of the driver. However, Healthy Road promises to do even more by recognizing emotions using face expression analysis and even stress through the measurement of the heart rate.
Healthy Road is one of the successful startup who took part to the 2nd Nitro Event in Sophia Antipolis (France) on the 1st and 2nd December 2016. The CEO and Co-Founder André Azevedo summarizes in this way the most recent achievement of his company: “We reached recently 90% accuracy in two main features – drowsiness and distraction detection – that allow us to open some closed doors and to have two new business deals for 2017”.
The startup has already received several recognitions and has additionally been chosen as one of the ten startups selected worldwide to the Rockstart’s Accelerator Program. By participating to Nitro they were looking for some focused advice to further growth their company and were eager to meet investors.
“Nitro meant for us two days to look at your startup results and find how you can improve them and plan the next step” – says the Co-Founder Azevedo.Having had the chance to meet several investors at Nitro, they understood one crucial thing: “Most investors are not interested to invest in product development,they want to invest their money on sales, so also the pitch deck should be changed accordingly”.
To learn more about Healthy Road visit http://healthyroad.pt/ or https://angel.co/healthyroad
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The call for Nitro 3 taking place in Lisbon on the 4th and 5th May 2017 is now online! If you wish to join amazing startups, be coached by experienced consultants and pitch in front of investors apply till the 15th March 2017 here http://epluseurope.eu/blog-entry/open-call-announcement-nitro-3-extreme-acceleration-event
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