State space model detection of driving fatigue considering individual differences and time cumulative effect

Fatigue is an important cause of traffic crashes, and effective fatigue detection models can reduce these crashes. Research has found large differences in fatigued driving performance from driver to driver, as well as a significant cumulative effect of fatigue on a given driver over time. Both sources of variation can decrease the accuracy of detection systems, but previous studies have not done enough to evaluate these differences. The purpose of this study is therefore to develop a fatigue detection model that considers individual differences and the time cumulative effect of fatigue. Data on the lateral position of the car in its lane, steering wheel movement, speed, and eye movement were collected from 22 drivers using a driving simulator with an eye-tracking system. Drivers’ subjective fatigue scores were collected using the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. State space models (SSMs) were built to detect fatigue in each driver, considering his or her individual features. As a time series model, the SSM can also address the time cumulative effect of fatigue, and it does not require a large dataset to achieve high levels of accuracy. The differences in SSM results confirm that diversity does exist among drivers’ fatigued driving performance, so the ability of the SSM to take into account driver-specific information from each individual driver suggests that it is more suitable for fatigue detection than models that use aggregated driver data. Results show that the fatigue detection accuracy of the SSM (77.73%) is higher than that of artificial neural network models (61.37%). The advantages of accuracy, high interpretability, and flexibility make the SSM a comprehensive and valuable individualized fatigue detection model for commercial use.