English

Virtual Breathalyzer

Human-Computer Interaction 2016-12-16 v1 Computers and Society

Abstract

Driving under the influence of alcohol is a widespread phenomenon in the US where it is considered a major cause of fatal accidents. In this research we present a novel approach and concept for detecting intoxication from motion differences obtained by the sensors of wearable devices. We formalize the problem of drunkenness detection as a supervised machine learning task, both as a binary classification problem (drunk or sober) and a regression problem (the breath alcohol content level). In order to test our approach, we collected data from 30 different subjects (patrons at three bars) using Google Glass and the LG G-watch, Microsoft Band, and Samsung Galaxy S4. We validated our results against an admissible breathalyzer used by the police. A system based on this concept, successfully detected intoxication and achieved the following results: 0.95 AUC and 0.05 FPR, given a fixed TPR of 1.0. Applications based on our system can be used to analyze the free gait of drinkers when they walk from the car to the bar and vice-versa, in order to alert people, or even a connected car and prevent people from driving under the influence of alcohol.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.05083,
  title  = {Virtual Breathalyzer},
  author = {Ben Nassi and Lior Rokach and Yuval Elovici},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.05083},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:24:49.590Z