Samsung launches 'Driving Insights'
Think your driving style could be a little better? Then Samsung is coming up with a solution for this, in the form of the Driving Insights app. The application will analyse your driving behaviour and provide feedback on it using AI. To do this, the application uses your smartphone's sensors, tracking your speed, acceleration, braking and cornering, among other things. You will then receive weekly summaries with comments on how you drive.
According to the leaked information, the app can start automatically as soon as your phone connects to your car's bluetooth. After that, rides are saved so you can look back later to see how you drove. You can filter those rides by distance or duration. The feedback sometimes sounds almost like you are getting an assessment from a driving instructor. In some examples, the AI praises a "calm and defensive driving style", while other reports point out "sporty driving" or abrupt accelerations. Long drives are also noted, including warnings to take sufficient breaks.
On the technical side, Samsung seems to go pretty far. The app can estimate how fast you are accelerating or braking and even detects sharp turns. Based on this, the system tries to recognise patterns in your driving style. Yet the feature also raises questions. After all, driving is something where context matters. Braking hard can be unwise, but sometimes necessary. The same goes for speed or steering movements. An AI system does not always see why you do something, only that you do it.
On top of that, AI feedback is sometimes worded a bit cautiously or kindly. For example, an "enthusiastic driving style" sounds a lot neater than "you might be driving a bit too aggressively". This makes it difficult to judge how seriously to take such analysis.
For data storage, Samsung seems to process the data locally on the device, rather than in the cloud. At the moment, the feature is still hidden in test software. How useful Driving Insights really becomes, time will have to tell.
