IIT-Hyderabad Develops New AI-Based System To Catch Bikers Without Helmets

With the intention to curb the habit of driving a two-wheeler without a helmet, the Hyderabad City Police has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. Here, the city traffic police will be using an artificial intelligence-based programme developed by the premier institute to automatically detect motorcyclists who are driving without helmets in surveillance videos. IIT Hyderabad has procured the required permissions to access to video data from the city’s network of CCTV cameras. Reports have suggested that the technology is in a "ready-to-be-deployed stage". Dinesh Singh, one of the research scholars on the project, told a leading daily, "It will be fully automatic along with a web interface to verify the alerts by the operators (traffic police, etc.). From there, it will be connected to the existing RTO website to generate challans and send a notification to the riders through an SMS.” The technology will follow the following stages:

• The solution is partially installed in cameras
• Also partially installed on the servers of the central police control room
• A software is installed on an embedded card attached to CCTV cameras
• It helps in the detection of violators (in this case, motorcyclists riding without helmets)
• The system will then send out an alert to the central alert database

Hyderabad is seeing a definite shift in the technological space. Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has turned the city into an IT hub which houses India’s Google and Facebook headquarters. (Andhra Pradesh currently shares its de jure capital Hyderabad with the neighbouring state Telangana, which was formed from the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014.) Already in China, the Government is combining technologies such as artificial intelligence, facial recognition and the mandatory social rating system to monitor, check and penalise ‘undesirable’ conduct of its citizens.