Dr Angus McKerral to speak in NZ next week
Inside Seeing Machines’ Canberra headquarters, an alarm has been sounding every thirty seconds for the past forty hours. Unlike a noisy suburban house alarm often ignored by neighbours, Seeing Machines Human Factors Research Scientist Dr Angus McKerral, is paying close attention to the high pitched chime. McKerral and his research colleagues are designing a new alert for the company’s driver safety technology, Guardian, and figuring out if the alarm’s tone is conveying the right amount of attention grabbing urgency to wake up a drowsy truck driver.
It's all in a day’s work designing lifesaving fatigue detection technology – however McKerral says no two days are the same.
“Every day we learn something new about how humans are driving. Our work is figuring out different human states when people are tired and distracted, learning what are they thinking about, and what are the best ways to support their safety. We want to know whether a person has the attention and awareness required to drive a heavy truck, and we want to know what capacity do they have to be an alert driver.”
Thirty one year old McKerral, who did an undergraduate Psychology degree and then a PhD in cognitive psychology with a focus on how humans interact with automated systems like self-driving cars, admits he is lucky to be able to step into a job that maximises all of his experience.
“I am driven by academic curiosity. Discovering something completely new, but in an environment where I can immediately put that knowledge to use, is unique to this job. This isn’t always the case with other research jobs where data is collected and analysed but there’s nothing to see after the research stage.”
Guardian, by Seeing Machines is unique from other driver monitoring systems in that the technology company has its own in-house research team, made up of a team of eight PhD scientists who design and write research projects and papers that shape product development and ensure it is grounded in robust science.
“The Human Factors team are all people from research backgrounds and a mix of disciplines like psychology and neuroscience, to engineering and computer science. Human Factors is essentially about interaction with the machine. We have input on different aspects of the design. This can be from algorithm development to a really specific level, like how bright an LED should be – and right up to the system-level where we look more holistically at how a person will respond to a monitoring system that can do X-Y-Z.
“We have a fleet of vehicles for testing and when new products are being piloted, we get inside them and involved with prototyping and fitting equipment to really appreciate the user experience.”
Whether McKerral is considering an algorithm to detect drowsiness or distraction, or testing the way a new system alerts drivers, he’s motivated to make a meaningful contribution to road safety – with the end goal to save lives.
“As a researcher, you want your work to be able to contribute something that has real-world benefit. Our team all have a motivation to be doing something bigger.”
Seeing Machines is headquartered in Canberra and the Australian business has another team in Melbourne, and more offices around the world including Guardian analyst centres in Tucson. The business literally have eyes everywhere and at all times of day and night.
McKerral says Guardian systems are deployed globally and has observed differences in driver behaviour by country.
“There is a higher rate of fatigue events in North America compared to Oceania or Europe, but we have to be wary about making generalisations from these findings, even at a regional level, given there’s a mix of regulations at play. Behaviours shown by a truck driver travelling for hours on a US highway at the speed limit wouldn’t be compared to how someone is driving in Japan on a low speed route for one third of the distance.
“Our focus is on delivering this kind of vital information to fleet operators, who can use camera footage of verified events and fatigue data to effectively manage their fleets so they are safer on the roads. Our sample are generally safety conscious drivers because they are already Guardian users.”
Angus McKerral is a guest speaker at Bus and Coach Conference, Due Drop Events Centre (Thursday, 3 October) and Transporting NZ North Island Seminar, Napier (Saturday, 5 October).
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