EEG-based Safety Driving Performance Estimation and Alertness Using Support Vector Machine

Abstract

Safety driving performance estimation and alertness (SDPEA) has drawn the attention of researchers in preventing traffic accidents caused by drowsiness while driving. Psychophysiological measures, such as electroencephalogram (EEG), are accurately investigated to be robust candidates for drivers’ drowsiness evaluation. This paper presents an effective EEG-based driver drowsiness monitoring system by analyzing the changes of brain activities in a simulator driving environment. The proposed SDPEA system can translate EEG signals into drowsiness level. Firstly, Independent component analysis (ICA) is performed on EEG data to remove artifacts. Then, eight EEG-band powers-related features: beta, alpha, theta, delta, (alpha plus theta)/beta, alpha / beta, (alpha plus theta)/(alpha plus beta) and theta / beta are extracted from the preprocessed EEG signals by employing the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Subsequently, fisher score technique selects the most descriptive features for further classification. Finally, Support Vector Machine (SVM) is employed as a classifier to distinguish drowsiness level. Experimental results show that the quantitative driving performance can be correctly estimated through analyzing driver’s EEG signals by the SDPEA system.