A 15-year-old boy from India’s capital, New Delhi, has created an AI-powered app that allows citizens to report potholes, assess their severity, and immediately report them to authorities.
Additionally, AI empowers citizens to overcome bureaucratic paralysis and inaction by instantly composing emails and letters to relevant authorities without having to look for extensions or email addresses.
The project, called ‘Project Sadak’, was designed by a young man named Parth. The parents were returning from celebrating a family occasion near Agra when their motorbike met with an accident in a hole in New Delhi at night.
Already interested in science and technology, and armed with his harrowing experience, Peirce decided to create something that would improve the road conditions in the world’s most populous country.
“I built the platform from scratch,” he told The Better India. “In the beginning, yes, we started writing code, but as the complexity started increasing, we needed to leverage AI.”
The app allows users to take photos of potholes, use GPS functionality to locate potholes in their area, and post both to Project Sadak servers. AI confirms that the photo is an actual pothole, and human review ensures that the specific grade of severe, moderate, or benign accurately reflects what is shown in the photo.
This will ensure that the worst potholes don’t flash red and get drowned out in the complaints of angry citizens. Once completed, users can automatically digitally sign an email with their name and send it to the competent authority in New Delhi.
“Initially, we would manually send emails to parties, but now the platform automatically generates emails and submits reports,” Peirce admits.
So far, 360 potholes have been reported and 11 have been repaired, nearly all by Perth himself, who used contractors through his father’s construction business.
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He blamed government corruption and dispersion of responsibility for why he had to deal with the issue himself, but one pothole was reported in Bengaluru and the issue was resolved even though the AI could not find contact information for the authorities.
Further improvements envisioned by Parth include full AI automation from photos to emails and a WhatsApp chatbot that will allow you to use Project Sadak without downloading an app.
Additionally, the app does not have a system to monitor whether already reported potholes are eventually repaired.
Share with this ambitious teen and the amazing app he designed for public safety…
