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NEWS
Scania researches sleep for safety
European drivers have volunteered to be included in a program that will detect how tired drivers will become and how they will rest during autonomous and semi-autonomous drivingLong-term driver Kent Persson (pictured) is one of ten drivers taking part in a research project headed by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute.
The objective of the project is to determine how drivers of autonomous trucks would rest, and to identify a means of measuring that rest.
However, that is just one of the many aspects of this wide-ranging research project.
Other aims include further enhancing emotion detection algorithms for positive, angry, scared and neutral states of mind, and using data from the project to develop existing algorithms for detecting sleepiness.
A further area of study is understanding how a driver becomes distracted at the wheel, as well as using collected data to try to identify if specific road features are more likely to induce certain driver states.
Over an intense 24-day test period, ten drivers have taken turns driving a Scania S 500 truck, travelling 460 kilometres per day over a five-and-a-half to six-hour time span. Each driver has been scheduled for two consecutive days of tests.
As a baseline, the participants initially take the wheel of a driving simulator as a cognitive pre-test. Then, on day one of the test, they drive the truck half the distance while taking the passenger seat for the remainder of the trip. During that time, another driver is in command, simulating autonomous driving conditions.
To that end, no communication whatsoever is permitted between the two drivers. The following day, the driver is alone in the cab for the entire journey. When the drivers return they are again tested on a simulator.
“At the end of the day, we would expect the driver to be more fatigued, and more so when he or she is at the wheel for the full six hours,” says Expert Cognitive Engineer Stas Krupenia, who heads the research project at Scania.
“We hope to determine the positive effects of rest in a measurable way. At present, we only define rest as not working and not as a physical and mental state.”
To monitor and detect and their physical exertion, the drivers are wired with an array of electrodes that track their heart rate, galvanic skin response (electrical changes in their skin that can cause sweating, for example), shoulder tension and eye blinks.
Each driver is also fitted with a wrist monitor that registers heart rate, perspiration and other parameters.
Meanwhile, three cameras are closely observing the driver, and while they are on the road he or she has to record how drowsy they feel every five minutes.
Overall, this will generate a tremendous amount of data which will be analysed to determine driver rest, stress, drowsiness and emotional state. In doing so, the researchers hope to play an important role in the ongoing effort to improve driver and road safety.
Other institutions involved in the program include the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Stockholm University, Uppsala University, Chemnitz University, the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Smart Eye, Ford and TomTom.
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Written byTrucksales Staff
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