When people leave bars and night clubs after an evening of entertainment, many are intoxicated and in no condition to drive. Because alcohol can boost one’s confidence, many of the drinkers falsely think they are still able to drive. While consumer alcohol breathalyzers exist on the market, they require drinkers to make the conscious decision to use them before getting behind the wheel.
Now researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have developed a “virtual breathalyzer” that uses motion sensors found within existing smart phones and wearable devices to detect inebriation. The researchers tested the system with 30 volunteer bar patrons and demonstrated that it produces identical results to police approved breathalyzers.
The devices used by the virtual breathalyzer include a Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, Google Glass glasses, an LG G-watch, and a Microsoft Band activity tracker. Each of the volunteers had their baseline walk recorded using the system before entering the bar and then the same was repeated after exiting. The two sets of readings were compared to each other to detect whether there’s a large enough difference to signal drunkenness.
While the system includes four different devices, including Google Glass that not everyone is excited to wear, it does seem to indicate that we may soon receive notifications from our gadgets when on their own they figure out that we shouldn’t be driving.
Study in arXiv: Virtual Breathalyzer…