This Student Invents An Smart AI-Powered Device To Reduce India’s Road Deaths

The number of people died in car accidents in India is estimated to be about 150,000. The specific causes of these accidents are unclear. But it is likely that most of them happened at night. In some cases, drivers couldn’t see anything because of the high beams from oncoming cars. Rishank Kanaparti, who is a grade 9 student from National Public School in Bangalore, understands this problem. And he aims to find a solution to this. He figured out the best way is to develop an automated AI-powered system that would prevent drivers from blinding each other while driving at night.

That is how he comes up with LightSafe, a device he designed and developed himself. LightSafe can detect an oncoming vehicle’s headlights thanks to its sensors. The device’s location is tracked by an algorithm.

The original prototype of LightSafe includes a Lego mechanical arm and a Raspberry Pi linked to a servo motor. Whenever the sensors notice that there are headlights coming, the beam would be flipped to the flow setting and flipped back after it passed.

However, Kanaaparti wasn’t satisfied with that as what he wanted is a system which could be integrated into modern vehicles and there would be no moving parts.

So, he has done more researching, connecting the device to a smartphone which can communicate with the Onboard Diagnostics system of the car. By doing this, the car can adjust the beam settings itself when needed.

Thanks to Kanaparti’s efforts, the product cost of LightSafe is incredibly affordable. What’s better here is that the device can be integrated into any vehicle, no matter what its manufacturing year. Moreover, the vehicle doesn’t need to have a built-in feature from the beginning.

Kanaparti hopes that his systems will soon be adopted so that the number of car accidents caused by high beams would be reduced significantly in India in particular and the world in general.