Abstract
The primary or secondary cause of over 30% of accidents is driver impairment, due to a variety of reasons. Relevant studies have shown that driver fatigue resulting from sleep deprivation or sleep disorders is an important factor in the increasing number of accidents on todays roads. Also, almost 30% of accidents could be avoided by reducing the driver related reaction time by just 0.5 sec, which may be achieved through warning by the AWAKE system. These arguments suggest that a successful application of the AWAKE project concept to develop a combined vehicle/driver-based hypovigilance diagnosis system may have an important impact on road safety by seriously reducing the accident rate.
The objective of the AWAKE project is the development of an unobtrusive and reliable in-vehicle system to monitor the driver and the environment, for real-time detection of hypovigilance, based on multiple parameters. The system will be designed for highway driving and should operate reliably and effectively in all highway-driving scenarios. The system will consist of the following modular components:
- A Hypovigilance Diagnosis Module (HDM) that will detect and diagnose driver hypovigilance in real-time.
- A Traffic Risk Estimation Module (TRE) that will assess the traffic situation and the involved risks.
- A Driver Warning System (DWS) that will use acoustic, visual and haptic means.
- A Hierarchical Manager (HM) which will be able to perform self-diagnosis, and which will co-ordinate the other system components.
Mentioned system components and sensors will be integrated in one single unit (the AWAKE unit). In the project three prototype systems will be developed; a city car, a luxury car and a heavy vehicle demonstrator.
Within AWAKE project, A Traffic Risk Estimation (TRE) module will be developed, based on existing ADAS, by correlating vehicle sensor data on imminent risk with a map database of critical landmarks and drivers risk awareness through a drivers gaze detection sensor.
The aim of the Traffic Risk Estimation module is not to develop a detailed mapping of the traffic situation around the vehicle, but just to recognise the most imminent discrete dangers around it, in a highway environment, correlate them to drivers attention and re-assess the hypovigilance detection results as well as the relevant warning strategy accordingly. Its aim is to enhance AWAKE user acceptance, by minimising false alarms and matching warning intention to the actual level of traffic risk.
This module will take into consideration the HDM diagnosis as well as the traffic situation and the drivers level of attention and will accordingly re-estimate his/her vigilance level, as well as adapt AWAKE system warning level to match the estimated danger.