Human-Centric Detection and Mitigation Approach for Various Levels of Cell Phone-Based Driver Distractions

abstract: Driving a vehicle is a complex task that typically requires several physical interactions and mental tasks. Inattentive driving takes a driver’s attention away from the primary task of driving, which can endanger the safety of driver, passenger(s), as well as pedestrians. According to several traffic safety administration organizations, distracted and inattentive driving are the primary causes of vehicle crashes or near crashes. In this research, a novel approach to detect and mitigate various levels of driving distractions is proposed. This novel approach consists of two main phases: i.) Proposing a system to detect various levels of driver distractions (low, medium, and high) using a machine learning techniques. ii.) Mitigating the effects of driver distractions through the integration of the distracted driving detection algorithm and the existing vehicle safety systems. In phase- 1, vehicle data were collected from an advanced driving simulator and a visual based sensor (webcam) for face monitoring. In addition, data were processed using a machine learning algorithm and a head pose analysis package in MATLAB. Then the model was trained and validated to detect different human operator distraction levels. In phase 2, the detected level of distraction, time to collision (TTC), lane position (LP), and steering entropy (SE) were used as an input to feed the vehicle safety controller that provides an appropriate action to maintain and/or mitigate vehicle safety status. The integrated detection algorithm and vehicle safety controller were then prototyped using MATLAB/SIMULINK for validation. A complete vehicle power train model including the driver’s interaction was replicated, and the outcome from the detection algorithm was fed into the vehicle safety controller. The results show that the vehicle safety system controller reacted and mitigated the vehicle safety status-in closed loop real-time fashion. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is efficient, accurate, and adaptable to dynamic changes resulting from the driver, as well as the vehicle system. This novel approach was applied in order to mitigate the impact of visual and cognitive distractions on the driver performance.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Applied Psychology 201

Driver Distraction Identification with an Ensemble of Convolutional Neural Networks

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 1.25 million deaths yearly due to road traffic accidents worldwide and the number has been continuously increasing over the last few years. Nearly fifth of these accidents are caused by distracted drivers. Existing work of distracted driver detection is concerned with a small set of distractions (mostly, cell phone usage). Unreliable ad-hoc methods are often used.In this paper, we present the first publicly available dataset for driver distraction identification with more distraction postures than existing alternatives. In addition, we propose a reliable deep learning-based solution that achieves a 90% accuracy. The system consists of a genetically-weighted ensemble of convolutional neural networks, we show that a weighted ensemble of classifiers using a genetic algorithm yields in a better classification confidence. We also study the effect of different visual elements in distraction detection by means of face and hand localizations, and skin segmentation. Finally, we present a thinned version of our ensemble that could achieve 84.64% classification accuracy and operate in a real-time environment.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1706.0949

Multimodal Polynomial Fusion for Detecting Driver Distraction

Distracted driving is deadly, claiming 3,477 lives in the U.S. in 2015 alone. Although there has been a considerable amount of research on modeling the distracted behavior of drivers under various conditions, accurate automatic detection using multiple modalities and especially the contribution of using the speech modality to improve accuracy has received little attention. This paper introduces a new multimodal dataset for distracted driving behavior and discusses automatic distraction detection using features from three modalities: facial expression, speech and car signals. Detailed multimodal feature analysis shows that adding more modalities monotonically increases the predictive accuracy of the model. Finally, a simple and effective multimodal fusion technique using a polynomial fusion layer shows superior distraction detection results compared to the baseline SVM and neural network models.Comment: INTERSPEECH 201

A Fuzzy-Logic Approach to Dynamic Bayesian Severity Level Classification of Driver Distraction Using Image Recognition

open access articleDetecting and classifying driver distractions is crucial in the prevention of road accidents. These distractions impact both driver behavior and vehicle dynamics. Knowing the degree of driver distraction can aid in accident prevention techniques, including transitioning of control to a level 4 semi- autonomous vehicle, when a high distraction severity level is reached. Thus, enhancement of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) is a critical component in the safety of vehicle drivers and other road users. In this paper, a new methodology is introduced, using an expert knowledge rule system to predict the severity of distraction in a contiguous set of video frames using the Naturalistic Driving American University of Cairo (AUC) Distraction Dataset. A multi-class distraction system comprises the face orientation, drivers’ activities, hands and previous driver distraction, a severity classification model is developed as a discrete dynamic Bayesian (DDB). Furthermore, a Mamdani-based fuzzy system was implemented to detect multi- class of distractions into a severity level of safe, careless or dangerous driving. Thus, if a high level of severity is reached the semi-autonomous vehicle will take control. The result further shows that some instances of driver’s distraction may quickly transition from a careless to dangerous driving in a multi-class distraction context

Detecting Distracted Driving with Deep Learning

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017Driver distraction is the leading factor in most car crashes and near-crashes. This paper discusses the types, causes and impacts of distracted driving. A deep learning approach is then presented for the detection of such driving behaviors using images of the driver, where an enhancement has been made to a standard convolutional neural network (CNN). Experimental results on Kaggle challenge dataset have confirmed the capability of a convolutional neural network (CNN) in this complicated computer vision task and illustrated the contribution of the CNN enhancement to a better pattern recognition accuracy.Peer reviewe

Video surveillance for monitoring driver's fatigue and distraction

Fatigue and distraction effects in drivers represent a great risk for road safety. For both types of driver behavior problems, image analysis of eyes, mouth and head movements gives valuable information. We present in this paper a system for monitoring fatigue and distraction in drivers by evaluating their performance using image processing. We extract visual features related to nod, yawn, eye closure and opening, and mouth movements to detect fatigue as well as to identify diversion of attention from the road. We achieve an average of 98.3% and 98.8% in terms of sensitivity and specificity for detection of driver's fatigue, and 97.3% and 99.2% for detection of driver's distraction when evaluating four video sequences with different drivers