Driver physiological monitoring for vehicle Emergency Response (DrivER)

Research Project, 2021 – 2023

Purpose and goal: In project DrivER (Driver physiological monitoring for vehicle Emergency Response), part of the Connected Occupant Physiological Evaluation (COPE) concept, we aim to evaluate three related concepts for driver state detection:
1) Using unobtrusive sensors to detect sleepiness in real-life driving; 2) Using unobtrusive sensors to assess stress level and cognitive load of professional drivers; 3) Detect sudden heart disease such as arrythmias using unobtrusive sensors, and as a result enable medical evaluation from a distance. Expected results and effects: The DrivER project aims to increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the three concepts under development. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) consist of retrospective and prospective evaluations of accuracy for detection of driver states, including sleepiness, high cognitive load and sudden heart disease, under varying conditions that test the limits of the systems’ capacity. The hope is that the results will point the way to the commercialization of non-obtrusive sensor systems for applications in manual and automated driving and digital health in vehicle environments. Approach and implementation: Development of driver state assessment will rely on data collected during three sub-studies. The first is naturalistic driving study using 50 instrumented vehicles with aim to further develop sleepiness detection. The second study includes simulator experiments with high task-load driving scenarios to develop cognitive load assessment algorithms. In the third study we aim to take the first steps towards detecting sudden illness by evaluating unobtrusive sensors in laboratory environment. Signal processing, sensor fusion and machine learning are fundamental building blocks.