Copyright © 2012 Pasquale Sena et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The search for safe vehicles is increasing with both diffusion of high traffic density over the world and availability of new technologies providing sophisticated tools previously impossible to realize. Design and development of the necessary devices may be based on simulation tests that reduce cost allowing trials in many directions. A proper choice of the arrangement of the drive simulators, as much as of the parameters to be monitored, is of basic importance as they can address the design of devices somehow responsible for the drivers safety or, even their lives. This system setup, consisting of a free car simulator equipped with a monitoring system, collects in a nonintrusive way data of the car lateral position within the road lane and of its first derivative. Based on these measured parameters, the system is able to detect symptoms of drowsiness and sleepiness. The analysis is realized by a fuzzy inferential process that provides an immediate warning signal as soon as drowsiness is detected with a high level of certainty. Enhancement of reliability and minimisation of the false alarm rate are obtained by operating continuous comparison between learned driver typical modalities of operation on the control command of the vehicle the pattern recorded.