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Smart wearable assistive technology, specifically a haptic wristband warning system, is being developed to alert distracted pedestrians to safely cross roads. This system will send vibration feedback about potential conflicts from approaching vehicles to alert distracted pedestrians based on vehicle speeds while crossing the road. The design accounts for the speed of approaching vehicles and informs pedestrians through vibrations of varying frequency levels to indicate the severity of the crossing conflict. The working methodology of the product and the working principle is as follows:
i. Vehicle Speed Tracking: The speed of vehicles is continuously tracked in real-time using a surveillance camera equipped with the YOLO-V9 object detection algorithm to detect the vehicle type and its speed. Vehicle speed tracking will only occur within the specified trap area.
ii. Time to Zebra (TTZ) Calculation: The TTZ, the time difference between the approaching vehicle’s current position and the crosswalk, is evaluated (refer to Figure 1). If multiple vehicles are approaching, the minimum TTZ (i.e., the vehicle with the highest approach speed) is used to compute the Modified TTZ (MTTZ) after deducting 2.5 seconds for the pedestrian's perception and reaction time from the TTZ.
iii. Setting Vibration Frequency: The MTTZ is used to determine the vibration frequency of the haptic watch. As the MTTZ decreases, the vibration intensity increases. The vibration frequency is divided into three levels, as shown in Figure 1.
iv. Sending Vibration Feedback: After computing the MTTZ, the system sends vibration feedback via the MQTT protocol. The setup then re-checks the speed of vehicles in the trap area at the next time instance, recalculates the TTZ, and repeats the steps from i to iv.
As the aim of the product is to enhance the safety of pedestrians, the setup is designed to perform all the computations at the edge unit to reduce the processing, transmission, and evaluation time of the captured data. The alert feedback from the edge unit is transmitted to the smart haptic watch worn by the pedestrian using the MQTT protocol. The system is designed to send the haptic feedback only to those specific devices whose MAC addresses are mapped into the system, ensuring that alerting information is provided to the haptic watch worn by at-risk pedestrians. This Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) application aims to reduce potential conflicts and decrease ambiguity in decision-making while crossing the road.