Use of eye tracking device to evaluate the driver’s behaviour and the infrastructures quality in relation to road safety

Eye tracking allows to obtain important elements regarding the drivers’ behaviour during their driving activity, by employing a device that monitors the movements of the eye and therefore of the user's observation point. In this paper it will be explained how analysing the behaviour of the drivers through the eye movements permits to evaluate the infrastructures quality in terms of road safety. Driver behaviour analysis have been conducted in urban areas, examining the observation target (cars, pedestrians, road signs, distraction elements) in quantitative terms (time of fixing each singular target). In particular, roundabout intersections and rectilinear segment of urban arterials have been examined and the records related to seven drivers’ behaviour were collected, in order to have a significant statistical variability. Only young people has considered in this study. The analyses carried out have made it possible to assess how different types of infrastructure influence the behaviour of road users, in terms of safety performance given by their design. In particular, quantitative analyzes were carried out on driving times dedicated to observing attention rather than distraction targets. From a statistical point of view, the relationship that exists between the characteristics of the driver, weather conditions and infrastructure, with driving behavior (traveling speed and attention / inattention time) was analyzed by ANOVA method

Driver distraction

Diplomová práce se zabývá odklonem pozornosti řidiče. V první části je provedena literární rešerše z oblasti odklonu pozornosti při řízení. Jsou zde charakterizované jednotlivé metody měření distrakce. Analytická část čerpá z videozáznamů z jízdních zkoušek poskytnutých pro vypracování této diplomové práce. Výsledná data byla vyhodnocena za účelem zjištění doby fixace na dopravní značení a reklamní zařízení v intravilánu/extravilánu ve dne/v noci a následná komparace vizuálního vnímání dopravního značení a reklamního zařízení.This thesis investigates the level of distraction while driving. The first part of the thesis is focused on the literature review in the field of distraction while driving. Several methods of measuring distraction while driving are being addressed here. The analytical part of the thesis draws on the video recordings of driving tests which were provided specifically for the purpose of this thesis. The resulting data were evaluated with goal to determine the time of visual fixation on traffic signs and advertising equipment in the urban area/non-urban area during the day/night and subsequent comparison of the visual perception of traffic signs and advertising equipment.

An eye-tracking evaluation of driver distraction and unfamiliar road signs

It is difficult enough for drivers to handle distractions when they are in a familiar environment, but what happens when dr

Towards Enhancing Traffic Sign Recognition through Sliding Windows

Automatic Traffic Sign Detection and Recognition (TSDR) provides drivers with critical information on traffic signs, and it constitutes an enabling condition for autonomous driving. Misclassifying even a single sign may constitute a severe hazard, which negatively impacts the environment, infrastructures, and human lives. Therefore, a reliable TSDR mechanism is essential to attain a safe circulation of road vehicles. Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) techniques that use Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have been proposed, but no agreement on a preferred ML algorithm nor perfect classification capabilities were always achieved by any existing solutions. Consequently, our study employs ML-based classifiers to build a TSR system that analyzes a sliding window of frames sampled by sensors on a vehicle. Such TSR processes the most recent frame and past frames sampled by sensors through (i) Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks and (ii) Stacking Meta-Learners, which allow for efficiently combining base-learning classification episodes into a unified and improved meta-level classification. Experimental results by using publicly available datasets show that Stacking Meta-Learners dramatically reduce misclassifications of signs and achieved perfect classification on all three considered datasets. This shows the potential of our novel approach based on sliding windows to be used as an efficient solution for TSR

Modeling driver distraction mechanism and its safety impact in automated vehicle environment.

Automated Vehicle (AV) technology expects to enhance driving safety by eliminating human errors. However, driver distraction still exists under automated driving. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has defined six levels of driving automation from Level 0~5. Until achieving Level 5, human drivers are still needed. Therefore, the Human-Vehicle Interaction (HVI) necessarily diverts a driver’s attention away from driving. Existing research mainly focused on quantifying distraction in human-operated vehicles rather than in the AV environment. It causes a lack of knowledge on how AV distraction can be detected, quantified, and understood. Moreover, existing research in exploring AV distraction has mainly pre-defined distraction as a binary outcome and investigated the patterns that contribute to distraction from multiple perspectives. However, the magnitude of AV distraction is not accurately quantified. Moreover, past studies in quantifying distraction have mainly used wearable sensors’ data. In reality, it is not realistic for drivers to wear these sensors whenever they drive. Hence, a research motivation is to develop a surrogate model that can replace the wearable device-based data to predict AV distraction. From the safety perspective, there lacks a comprehensive understanding of how AV distraction impacts safety. Furthermore, a solution is needed for safely offsetting the impact of distracted driving. In this context, this research aims to (1) improve the existing methods in quantifying Human-Vehicle Interaction-induced (HVI-induced) driver distraction under automated driving; (2) develop a surrogate driver distraction prediction model without using wearable sensor data; (3) quantitatively reveal the dynamic nature of safety benefits and collision hazards of HVI-induced visual and cognitive distractions under automated driving by mathematically formulating the interrelationships among contributing factors; and (4) propose a conceptual prototype of an AI-driven, Ultra-advanced Collision Avoidance System (AUCAS-L3) targeting HVI-induced driver distraction under automated driving without eye-tracking and video-recording. Fixation and pupil dilation data from the eye tracking device are used to model driver distraction, focusing on visual and cognitive distraction, respectively. In order to validate the proposed methods for measuring and modeling driver distraction, a data collection was conducted by inviting drivers to try out automated driving under Level 3 automation on a simulator. Each driver went through a jaywalker scenario twice, receiving a takeover request under two types of HVI, namely “visual only” and “visual and audible”. Each driver was required to wear an eye-tracker so that the fixation and pupil dilation data could be collected when driving, along with driving performance data being recorded by the simulator. In addition, drivers’ demographical information was collected by a pre-experiment survey. As a result, the magnitude of visual and cognitive distraction was quantified, exploring the dynamic changes over time. Drivers are more concentrated and maintain a higher level of takeover readiness under the “visual and audible” warning, compared to “visual only” warning. The change of visual distraction was mathematically formulated as a function of time. In addition, the change of visual distraction magnitude over time is explained from the driving psychology perspective. Moreover, the visual distraction was also measured by direction in this research, and hotspots of visual distraction were identified with regard to driving safety. When discussing the cognitive distraction magnitude, the driver’s age was identified as a contributing factor. HVI warning type contributes to the significant difference in cognitive distraction acceleration rate. After drivers reach the maximum visual distraction, cognitive distraction tends to increase continuously. Also, this research contributes to quantitatively revealing how visual and cognitive distraction impacts the collision hazards, respectively. Moreover, this research contributes to the literature by developing deep learning-based models in predicting a driver’s visual and cognitive distraction intensity, focusing on demographics, HVI warning types, and driving performance. As a solution to safety issues caused by driver distraction, the AUCAS-L3 has been proposed. The AUCAS-L3 is validated with high accuracies in predicting (a) whether a driver is distracted and does not perform takeover actions and (b) whether crashes happen or not if taken over. After predicting the presence of driver distraction or a crash, AUCAS-L3 automatically applies the brake pedal for drivers as effective and efficient protection to driver distraction under automated driving. And finally, a conceptual prototype in predicting AV distraction and traffic conflict was proposed, which can predict the collision hazards in advance of 0.82 seconds on average

A Study of Model of Kawaii Feelings for Evaluation of Products

芝浦工業大学2018年