Maruti ties up with Microsoft for HAMS driver training tech

Maruti Suzuki has partnered with Microsoft Research India to introduce smartphone-based technology for testing applicants seeking a driver's license. The new technology called Harnessing Automobile for Safety (HAMS) has been deployed at the Automated Driving Test centre (ADTC), Dehradun.

HAMS is being developed and tested jointly by the Institute of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR) and Microsoft Research India. During the test, the applicant's car is fastened with a HAMS enabled smartphone that monitors the driver as well as the road in front. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) and even tracks the vehicle's trajectory during the test. A video of the test is recorded to make the process more transparent.

Thanks to the new technology, the time taken to complete the test and generate the report has reduced to 10 minutes. The average pass rate stands at 54% as compared to over 90% in the earlier manual testing mode.

Maruti Suzuki has partnered with State Governments to set up Automated Driving Test Centres. These are equipped with various advanced systems including:

• Facial recognition to address identity fraud
• Automatic seat belt use detection, for safety compliance
• Automatic detection of traffic signal violations
• Ability to validate driving correctness for standard maneuvers like S-round about, parallel parking, reverse parking
• Monitoring kerb hits
• Automatic generation of test score and outcome
• Video evidence for candidates who wish to review their test