Apple would develop and test new features for iPhones and Apple Watch. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the company would be finalizing details of a system that would be able to detect if a car has been in an accident and automatically call 911.
An immediate response to an emergency
The time between when a car is involved in an accident and when medical help arrives is crucial in the vast majority of situations. Aware of this, Apple is reportedly working on an artificial intelligence system that can determine if a car has been in an accident using data from iPhone and Apple Watch sensors.
The system, which would be available in 2022, would respond automatically by calling emergencies and communicating the situation. A mechanism of action very similar to that We can already see in the fall detection of the Apple Watch. A mechanism which, without a doubt, can make the difference in terms of the outcome of the event.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has been testing this feature for a year using anonymous data collected from iPhones and Apple watches that have decided to help improve health features. With these data, the company would have detected more than 10 million vehicle impacts.
“Apple products have already detected more than 10 million suspected vehicle crashes, of which more than 50,000 included an emergency call.”
“Apple ha estado utilizando los datos de llamadas a emergencias para mejorar the precisión of su algoritmo de detección de accidents, ya que una llamada de emergencia asociada con un presunto impacto da a Apple más confianza en que de hecho es un accidente automovilístico, según the documents”.
The “crash detection” would arrive next year, ready to make a difference.
It’s really surprising how, thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms, we can extract such valuable information from something as simple as an accelerometer and some sensors. In the end, these sensors measure, on different axes, only the gravitational force that they are subjected to. The spikes of gravity, i.e. acceleration or deceleration, indicate sudden shocks, and with it, AI engines are trained, ready to distinguish these data models from similar ones.
If we look at Apple Watch’s fall detection emergency call system, we can expect this new “crash detection” to also have a countdown in which it asks users if they are going. good. Not answering the clock or the iPhone would directly call the emergency room and play a recording explaining the situation and include location data and other relevant information.
Such a system must be able to make a huge difference in the way emergency services respond to accidents. As we said before, arrival time is the key in most cases, so this feature can have a huge impact. One that we will never want to use, but one that will definitely be welcome.
