This device, designed by Center Grove High School students, would alert drivers when their eyes stray from the road.
ANDY BELL-BALTACI | DAILY JOURNAL
For the second time in three years, students from Center Grove High School will be representing the school in a national technology innovation contest.
This time, students are working on a device that will beep, much like an unbuckled seatbelt alert, if a driver’s eyes stray off the road. They’re looking to decrease the number of accidents caused by distracted driving after fellow student Austin Norris died in a car crash in October.
The Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest named six students from Center Grove High School: Hope Mander, Maddie Siems, Shelby Walker, Ananya Balaji, Shirley Zheng and Paige Merrill, to the national finalist stage. They’re the only students from Indiana to make it this far in the contest.
L-R, Center Grove High School students Shirley Zheng, Hope Mander, Paige Merrill, Maddie Siems, Ananya Balaji and Shelby Walker are national finalists in the 2022 Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest. SUBMITTED PHOTO
The students, along with peers from nine other schools in the United States, are in the running for the chance to be named a national winner and earn their school $100,000 for future projects in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
The students, who are seniors in Andrea Teevan’s Project Lead the Way biomedical science class, will travel to New York City to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges April 25. If the students are selected among three National Winners, they will travel to Washington, D.C. and present their product to a congressional panel, Balaji said.
Thus far, the group of students has earned $60,000 for the project, which they’ve used to make prototypes, a 3D-printed rendering of the device, and a video discussing the project, including an interview with a woman from Carmel who was paralyzed from the waist down in a distracted-driving accident.
The device, which can hold a phone and attaches to a car’s dashboard, tracks eye movement. The device beeps when a driver is distracted and because it sits on the dashboard, it will direct drivers’ eyes back up to the roadway, Merrill said.
“Our project is a device that … tracks eye movement beyond a given threshold to detect when a driver’s focus is not on the road. It will increase motor safety after one of our peers passed away in a crash,” Merrill said. “We researched first what was already there. We looked at eye-tracking software and what resources we could find that would have that software and a device that could hold the camera.”
Some cars have that type of software pre-installed, but a portable device that could attach to any car would make the technology accessible to all drivers, Zheng said.
The technology would be effective in getting drivers to pay attention to the road in front of them, said Ray Jackson, Center Grove police chief, in the video.
“People put their seatbelt on to avoid the ‘ding,’” Johnson said. “If there’s a ‘ding,’ people are going to put their phone down, put those things down, and not concentrate on the person next to them. They’ll keep their eyes on the road.”
Half of any funding won from the project will pay for new Samsung products for the school, such as computers, video equipment and software, while the other half will likely pay for other technology including tablets and 3D printers, Teevan said.
In 2020, another group of Center Grove High School students, Mahek Agrawal, Madison Hammill and Athulya Nair were named national finalists in the competition for their idea for a material that would provide warmth for low-income residents. This time, another all-female group is leading the way.
“When I asked who was interested, these six ladies stepped up,” Teevan said. “It’s inspiring to have a group of young ladies rise to the challenge. They put their minds together and took a minute to come up with their idea and they surpassed my initial expectations.”
The previous trio of Center Grove students inspired Siems to take on the challenge, she said.
“It’s a huge honor to be among 10 selected (national finalists) and the only team from Indiana,” Siems said.
