Estimating driving performance based on EEG spectrum and fuzzy neural network

The growing number of traffic fatalities in recent years has become a serious concern to society. Accidents caused by drivers' drowsiness behind the steering wheel have a high fatality rate because of the marked decline in the drivers' abilities of perception, recognition, and vehicle control abilities while sleepy. Preventing accidents caused by drowsiness requires a technique for detecting, estimating, and predicting the level of alertness of a driver and a mechanism for maintaining his/her maximum performance. This work describes a system that combines electroencephalographic (EEG) power spectrum estimation, principal component analysis, and fuzzy neural network model to estimate/predict drivers' drowsiness level in a driving simulator. Our results demonstrated that, for the first time, it is feasible to accurately estimate task performance, accurately estimate quantitatively measured driving performance, expressed as deviation between the center of the vehicle and the center of the cruising lane, in a realistic driving simulation.