A tech company has developed what it claims is the first driver neuromonitoring system that detects driver impairment, differentiating between drugs, alcohol, fatigue and general distraction, all without a camera.

CorrActions demonstrated its software technology at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, where it claimed an ability to detect “mind-off driving” even when the driver’s hands are on the wheel and eyes on the road.

It plans to roll it out to the automotive sector next year, and to the commercial trucking business a couple years thereafter.

“Our mission is to improve road safety and eventually save lives, and we’re doing this with an AI software solution that understands various driver cognitive impairments,” Ilan Reingold, chief executive officer (CEO) of CorrActions, told journalists who were part of the House of Journalists at CES. “That includes alcohol today, and we’re already demonstrating distraction and fatigue and a variety of other cognitive imperfections or impairments, and we’re doing that in real time.”

Because CorrActions has built a software-only product – no hardware such as cameras is involved – it has sped up its ability to bring the technology to market. The software interprets the connection between brain and muscle activity.

“So, you can imagine that almost anything that affects our brain activity eventually affects how our muscles operate, and that includes various impairments,” Reingold explained.

CorrActions monitors thousands of micro-motions that are controlled by the driver’s brain. Cognitive impairment affects a driver’s motion data and how they interact with the steering wheel and pedals.

“We’re taking that data and we’re analyzing it through our AI software,” Reingold said. The software has proven to be able to differentiate between various forms of cognitive impairment, including alcohol intoxication, which at CES was demonstrated on a simulator.

“You can think about it as a software breathalyzer for the driver,” Reingold said. “That’s what we’re doing at a high level. Once we know that the driver is impaired, the car can take action to compensate for the driver’s capabilities in order to keep the driver safe and compensate for the driver’s impairments, for example, starting by alerting them but then taking correction action through the ADAS [Advanced Driver Assistance System], reducing the speed, limiting the acceleration or taking some other actions.”

The system doesn’t recognize who is behind the wheel or collect personal data, though a fleet could do so using its own telematics platform.

The technology has garnered attention from some big names, including Volvo Cars, Blackberry, Goodyear and others, allowing it to raise about US$10 million. In testing, CorrActions software has delivered fewer false positive reports than camera-based systems, Reingold said.

The company has tested the software over more than 15,000 driving hours in various weather conditions across a variety of vehicle types. It has proven to differentiate between various forms of impairment, including drugs.

“We can differentiate between the different types of impairment because each of the impairments has a different pattern of these micro-motions, or brain activity that’s reflected through these micro-motions,” Reingold explained.

CorrActions’ path to market in the automotive space will go through partner OEMs, while it will likely break into the trucking space through partnerships with existing telematics providers fleets are using today.