CANBERRA based start-up company HLS Vehicle Customisation is on a mission to improve road safety and driver awareness through innovative technology.

HLA co-founder Kevin Atkinson says the company recently launched its first iOS device app, DashSketch, as the first step in making their unique driver awareness technology available to all drivers.

“DashSketch is a connected driving application that combines a smart dashcam, vehicle data logging, turn-by-turn navigation, location-based road safety information and a cloud-based sharing and management service,” Kevin said.

“DashSketch’s unique Average Speed Zone Monitoring will provide an important tool for Canberra drivers, helping them stay focussed on the road whilst remaining compliant with average speed zones within the ACT.

“The feature is unique to the app and could potentially save millions of dollars in accident related expenses by keeping drivers’ eyes up and ahead in Canberra’s Point to Point Safety Camera zones.

“Our concern with average speed zones is that drivers become focussed on their speedometer rather than watching the road – a particular issue on a road like Hindmarsh Drive with a dense kangaroo population.

“DashSketch automatically detects these average speed zones, determines your compliance with the average speed and displays a clear ‘traffic light’ colour scheme to the driver. When using DashSketch on a device mounted in a driver’s peripheral vision our testing showed a 68% reduction in the amount of time spent looking down at the speedometer. Without DashSketch our test driver covered 1.4km of the Hindmarsh Drive Westbound zone looking down at the speedo to ensure he remained below 80kph at all times; with DashSketch that was reduced to just 442m.

“The company is also about to launch DashSketch Aware, a cloud-based service that uses Machine Learning to analyse a wide range of road safety and vehicle usage data and provides drivers with real time, location-specific awareness of high-risk driving situations.”

Atkinson’s co-founder James Hodge said the complex data analysis provided through Machine Learning had the potential to revolutionise how we focus our awareness whilst driving.

“Our Machine Learning algorithms can detect unusual patterns across massive data sets, for example identifying a piece of road with a high instance of serious accidents in wet conditions“, James said.

“A vehicle equipped with DashSketch Aware can know when your planned route traverses that road and alert you if the weather report predicts rain along the way”.

Atkinson said the ability for the company to build on these innovative road safety products was only possible due to an ACT Government grant.

“We had developed a concept around the DashSketch app and our machine learning platform but we were only able to realise its full potential after we received a grant through Innovation

Connect,” Atkinson said.

“This not only allowed us to develop the app in full, but to move from the garage we started in to a dedicated office space in Fyshwick.”

DashSketch is available now for iOS devices through the iTunes App Store and will be released for Android devices later in the year. The Average Speed Zone Monitoring functionality is available in Canberra immediately and will be rolled out to other Australian states over the course of the year.

The DashSketch Aware service will be rolled out as part of the DashSketch app in the coming months, starting with an ACT-based trial, and HLS is actively seeking partnerships with vehicle manufacturers and transport fleet operators to include DashSketch Aware in factory navigation units and custom fleet management solutions.