SafeMate

In logistics and transportation, two major aspects are of special interests namely, road safety and driving efficiency. The goal is to minimise the risk of road accidents while maximise driving efficiency in terms of fuel consumption. At present, road traffic accident fatalities is a major problem for many developing countries including Thailand. The statistics in 2013 have shown that Thai roads are the second most dangerous in the world with 44 fatalities per 100,000 populations.

SafeMate is a driving behaviour evaluation platform using only just smartphones, without external hardware. The main objective is to provide a cutting-edge and easily accessible tool on a smartphone for road users to be aware of their driving styles and use it as corrective measures to improve their driving skills. SafeMate utilises the flexibility that smartphone has to offer by deploying existing sensors within a smartphone to the full potential. It is portable, easily accessible and fully customisable. Based on the accelerometer sensor on the smartphone, SafeMate is able to evaluate driver behaviour in real-time using novel algorithms from a 2 years research and development period. Alerts and warnings are given when dangerous movements are detected such as sudden braking and fast lane change. Users will be given a driving score at the end of the trip with suggestions to improve their driving styles the next time they are behind the wheel.

SafeMate is available in two versions, personal and enterprise. The personal version is free to download from iOS App Store and Google Play Store. This provides a taste of some of the features SafeMate has to offer. Launched in April 2014, the personal version currently has over 52,000 downloads world-wide. It is available in Thai and English and currently being used in over 20 countries. The enterprise version offers a total solution of monitoring and managing fleets of vehicles. Potential use cases would be in logistics and transportation management. SafeMate enterprise has had a 3 months trial at an international school in Bangkok monitoring 16 school buses. After the trial, we have received positive feedback from the school. SafeMate enterprise has then been successfully commercialised in 2016 with a licensing agreement with a car insurance company. It will be used as an engine to evaluate insurance policy holders in order to create a usage based insurance where personalised pricing can be calculated for each driver.

At the moment, a new feature is in the making with fuel consumption capability as well as connectivity to OBD II readers which is able to directly obtain data from your vehicles. SafeMate can be downloaded from Google Play and Apple App Store for a safer drive.

Cinque Terre
Download on Google Play
Cinque Terre
Download on the App Store