Panasonic develops technology that sense emotional and physical condition
Panasonic has developed a fatigue driving warning system, named as “emotional and physical condition SENSING”. The system, with the analysis of AI which was developed by Panasonic, can divide driver’s sleepy data into “not sleepy”, “sleepy” and other three levels.
Two cameras, monitoring camera and thermal camera, are included in “Emotional and physical condition SENSING”. There are some facial characteristics when a man is sleepy. The monitoring camera captures the driver’s facial expression and the moment of blinking. Panasonic has collected about 1800 kinds of doze-related physiological parameters.
The thermal camera can capture the driver’s skin temperature and body heat dissipation. Panasonic and Japan Chiba University conducted a study. They found that no matter how people dressed, a certain contact between the amount of human body heat and the degree of drowsiness will form after a period of time. So Panasonic developed an infrared sensor, “Grid-EYE”. It can predict the sleepy situation of the driver, combining with environmental changes (such as the sky gradually darkened).
Panasonic used its experience, gained when producing air conditioning, in the fatigue driving warning system. “Grid-EYE” monitors whether the human body is at the appropriate temperature, and the system can automatically adjust the temperature of the car air conditioning to make the driver in a sober state. If driver’s sleepy characteristics are detected by the system, there will be strong wind to wake the driver up.
In order to develop “emotional and physical condition SENSING” system, Panasonic has applied for a total of 22 patents. The reason why Panasonic has made great efforts to develop fatigue driving early warning system is that the car business has become increasingly important to Panasonic. The 2016-year report shows that Panasonic’s Automotive Infotainment Systems, which is primarily responsible for the car business, contributed more than 30 percent of Panasonic’s sales, which has made it become Panasonic’s most profitable subsidiary.
