Driver Fatigue and Distraction Monitoring and Warning System

Fatigue and distraction are among the major risk factors associated with Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) crashes. For this effort, Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes to develop an innovative, low-cost, practical and non-contact concept called Multi-Modal Driver Distraction and Fatigue Detection/Warning System (MDF). MDF consists of four major modules: (1) Vision Module for measuring driver pose and psychophysiological measures of alertness (e.g. PERCLOS, AECS), detecting hand gestures and yawning. (2) Driving Style module for detecting erratic inter/intra-lane driving, and erratic speed variations based on yaw rate sensor and/or CAN bus signals. (3) Non-contact Physiological sensing module that leverages recent advances in Physiological sensing (like heart rate monitoring) from a distance using simple camera system and (4) Sensor fusion, Recording, and Warning and Individualization module that manages the inputs from the other modules and takes appropriate action and issues warning when necessary. MDF provides innovative yet practical, fast yet reliable, detection of driver distraction and fatigue under a wide variety of operating conditions. By fusing different modalities of sensor information, MDF will work for different drivers with different physiological features and provide unique and customized feedback.