According to the Portuguese Road Safety Authority, car accidents have a very significant impact on our society, with drowsiness being one of the main causes of accidents in Portugal. This was the basis for the development of the project AUTOMOTIVE – AUTOmatic multimodal drowsiness detection for smart VEhicles, which focused on the study and development of methodologies for driver monitoring, with particular emphasis on fatigue and drowsiness detection, using sensors on the steering wheel.
The group of researchers, which brought together the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC), the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL), CARDIOID Technologies and the Cooperativa de Formação e Animação Cultural (COFAC), focused on developing a robust, driver-oriented system using multiple sources of information, i.e., video or physiological signals, that learn each driver’s unique personal patterns, for increasingly accurate detections.
“On the one hand, the project led to more realistic and immersive simulators to improve the collection of more complete and higher quality databases. On the other hand, innovative algorithms were developed for various tasks related to biometrics, drowsiness detection and emotion recognition, which advance the development of integrated methodologies for efficient, continuous, and personalised monitoring of driver fatigue”, explained Ana Filipa Sequeira, project coordinator and researcher at INESC TEC.
The AUTOMOTIVE technology will initially be applied to fleets of heavy vehicles, but its integration into passenger vehicles is also planned.
The project was funded by the European Union and national public financing – approximately €250K.
The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC.
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