AI behind the wheel – student’s Speed Bot makes national science, engineering final

Statistics on reported road casualties in Great Britain show that there were 1,870 reported road deaths and 27,820 people killed or seriously injured reported to the police for the year ending June 2019. Now more than ever the younger generations want to change the future of their worlds, with 69 per cent stating when asked that they would like to use a career in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to improve the world they live in and make a difference, and the issue of road casualties is something that a Year 9 student from Reading wanted to put a stop to.

Sida Li in year 9 at Reading School designed an app for The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Competition and is heading to the finals in at The Big Bang Fair in Birmingham on the 11th March. The app’s aim is to prevent distracted driving and speeding, and hopefully help to reduce the number of injuries and deaths each year on the roads.

Sida’s app, available on the Google store for free, works to recognise traffic signs via a live camera feed and identifies them to the driver by a narrator. As it uses machine learning instead of GPS, it isn’t bound by potentially out of date maps, and can work with the signs that are presented on the road in real time.

Sida commented: “My goal was to create something that could combat traffic casualties globally. To train the network, I used the Google Cloud Platform and created a deep learning virtual machine, training the programme with 12,000 images from eight different super classes of traffic signs.”

Hilary Leevers, chief executive, EngineeringUK said, “Sida’s project is a great example of how engineers innovate to find solutions to real-world problems and we’re excited to see how he will do at the UK finals at The Fair.

Going into its twelfth year in 2020, The Big Bang Fair continues to be a great source of STEM inspiration for young people, representing an amazing opportunity for young visitors, their teachers and parents to get hands-on with a wide range of activities, workshops and shows, and engage in meaningful career conversations with professionals, all designed to bring classroom learning to life and inspire the next generation.”

Sida will attend the competition finals, which are taking place at The Big Bang Fair at Birmingham’s NEC in March 2020. Here, he will vie for top prizes, which include the coveted title of GSK UK Young Engineer and GSK UK Young Scientist of the Year.