How Smartphones Could Be Used To Advise Owners When They're Too Drunk
If you've had too much to drink, smartphones can detect it by tracking your movements, specifically the changes in how you walk, according to new findings. However, the study is only in its rudimentary stages, and researchers have yet to explore the specific biophysics in detail.
As parts of the world slowly open back up post-COVID-19, phone tracking has become a common way to combat the spread of coronavirus via contact tracing. Yet it isn't without its issues - problems with relying on Bluetooth arise as do questions of ethics regarding the evasion of user privacy. As contact tracing evolves, like how it helps police catch violent rioter and looters, now phone tracking technology could be used to further promote public health, and safety.
According to EurekAlert, a new study published in the Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs researched how tracking a person's movements through their smartphone can detect when they're intoxicated. The study included 22 volunteers from the ages of 21 to 43. They were each given enough alcohol to reach a breath alcohol concentration of .20 percent, and then researchers proceeded to observe the subjects as they performed a variety of movement tasks. Lead researcher Brian Suffoletto hopes the study will "prevent deaths and injury related to excessive alcohol consumption."
Over the span of seven hours, researchers harnessed smartphones onto the subject's lower back and asked each of them to walk ten steps back and forth each hour. Through phone sensors, they tracked changes of speed, and the slightest of movements -- not just back and forth, but from side to side and up and down. The specific movements would generate 'signatures' that would reveal if the subject was in fact still intoxicated or becoming sober again. The study proved to be very accurate: almost 90-percent of the time the researchers successfully used the subject's movement pattern to deduce if they were past the legal limit (0.8 BAC).
Although the position of the phone on the lower back helped the study accurately track movement, it doesn't reflect how people actually hold their phones. The researchers were aware of this flaw, calling the study a "small investigation," but it's only the first of many investigations they plan to explore on the correlation between the tracking of movement through the smartphone and the owner's intoxication. In future studies, they plan to have the phone in a side-pocket or in the subject's hand. Ultimately, researchers see a future where phones can notify the user, like by text message, preventing them from possibly endangering others, and harming themselves. Furthermore, since law enforcement currently uses phone tracking, smartphones could help police catch more drunk drivers -- or possibly help prove that the person was not drunk when pulled over.
Source: EurekAlert.