Driver Fatigue, Distraction, and Alerting Technology

Transecurity is a company whose mission is to commercialize technology developed at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. VTTI researchers and engineers have made significant breakthroughs in driver monitoring, crash risk assessment, and crash avoidance technology including drowsy driver monitoring and warning systems. Technical solutions under development include machine vision-based lane tracker, PERCLOSE monitor, forward near-crash detector, driver behavior monitors and models that integrate multiple measures to maximize algorithm effectiveness. Despite substantial developments in drowisiness detection, a robust and affordable commercial product has yet to achieve sufficient market penetration to impact the driver drowsiness problem. We believe existing systems suffer from one or more of the following problems; high cost, obtrusiveness, operatinal limitations, robustness in the trucking domain, and a lack of general effectiveness or driver acceptance. We propse an approach that addresses each of these issues. VTTI data sets, research products, and sophisticated statistical methods will be used to create and validate a multi-variable drowsy driver detection algorithm. The algorithm will be integrated into an in-vehicle driver monitor and data acquisition system appropriate for use in trucking environments. Finally, a complete technical specificatin for both hardware and software required to support the creation of a fatigue monitoring and alerting system.