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Uber Will Use Your Smartphone to Know If You’re Drunk or Tired

Uber, the world’s biggest ride hailing company, has had its share of incidents since it entered the market nine years ago. There have been alleged beatings, sexual assaults, and who knows what else. Some, to be blamed on the drivers, others, on the passengers.
Uber's app to get even more data in the future 1 photo
Photo: boygeniusreport.com
The drivers’ share of the blame will soon get fixed, as Uber already announced plans to have a more restrictive screening process for the drivers, including criminal background and driving history checks.

Making sure passengers are not planning something nasty is, however, a lot more complicated. Some would say even impossible. But not for computers and algorithms.

As per a patent filed by Uber this month and unearthed by The Telegraph, the company plans a very Orwellian approach to the matter. Simply put, using machine learning, Uber would be able to know whether the person making the call for a trip is intoxicated or tired.

Uber says in the document the need for such a technology arises from the history of “safety incidents that can negatively impact the transport experience.” The implementation of such a technology would “minimize impact of such safety incidents.

The machine learning technology Uber is working on would generate “a prediction about the current state of the user” by comparing “data associated with the trip request to data about past trip requests.

If irregularities such as typographical errors, amount of time spent to make the trip request, or the user's accuracy in pressing an interface element are detected, the system would warn the responding driver to be on his toes.

Uber plans to use as data gathering tools motion sensors, device angle sensors, GPS, and touch sensors built into a screen. The data would be used to determine other criteria such as the angle at which the user held the device when placing the order and even the speed at which he was traveling, if any.

Theoretically, knowing whether a passenger is intoxicated or tired would not result in the fare being denied, but would rather lead to the passenger being paired with a more experienced driver, Uber says.

It's not yet clear how advanced the research on this technology is or how accurate it would be. The long, complicated and extremely technical detailing of the technology can be found at the following link.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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