Every day our ridesharing service Yandex.Taxi provides millions of rides to and from work, friends’ and families’ homes, classes, the gym, and many other locations. This past January alone our thousands of drivers provided over 62 million rides to users of the service. While helping facilitate millions of rides, we are also committed to making each and every ride a positive experience for both our drivers and passengers. One of the most important aspects of providing a high-quality user experience is ensuring passenger safety.
As part of our continued commitment to safety, Yandex.Taxi recently began testing a two-step driver identification system powered by our computer vision and voice technologies that requires drivers to send a selfie and a recording of their voice through the app during each driving shift. We developed the two-step driver identification system for the driver side application for Yandex.Taxi as an important safety check that not only verifies our drivers identity to ensure passenger safety but also serves to protect drivers’ data.
Yandex.Taxi drivers are prompted to take and submit a selfie in addition to recording themselves reading a provided text. This data combination createss a unique key for each driver and verifies their identity with more than 90% accuracy. After the driver is positively identified they are able to receive ride orders.
If a driver’s appearance changes – say by weight change or facial hair growth – the algorithms automatically update and factor in differences in appearance while using historical data to confirm it is the same driver. Yandex’s SpeechKit voice technologies are also able to identify a driver when there is a variation in voice tone or pitch.
In addition to the verification of drivers, Yandex.Taxi routinely runs vehicle inspections by requiring drivers to send photos of both the interior and exterior of their cars. We also welcome passenger feedback on the condition of the vehicle and interactions with drivers. We consider excellent vehicle condition and cleanliness to also be important aspects of Yandex.Taxi’s commitment to ensuring passenger and driver safety.
Yandex.Taxi is piloting the AI driver identification system in Russia and shortly, it will expand to all other countries in which our service operates. Currently, drivers are asked to submit a selfie and record their voice periodically throughout their driving shift when they aren’t active on the roads. In the future, the system will operate at the start of each driver’s shift.