DEVELOPMENT OF A VIRTUAL VALIDATION FRAMEWORK FOR DRIVER DROWSINESS AND ATTENTION WARNING SYSTEMS

Improvements in vehicle safety have played a crucial role in substantially reducing the occurrence of fatalities and severe injuries on the roads over the past few decades. In 2018, the EU announced a goal of decreasing road deaths and serious injuries by half by 2030. This objective is outlined within the Commission's strategic road safety action plan as well as the EU's strategic framework for road safety for the 2021-2030 period. Additionally, this framework sets specific road safety targets aimed at achieving the "zero fatalities" goal by 2050, with the aim of decreasing the number of road fatalities. Nowadays an essential element for enhancing road safety to a greater extent involves the integration of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) into vehicles. Since July 2022, Driver Drowsiness and Attention Warning systems are to be mandatory for all new types falling into M (vehicles carrying passenger) and N (vehicles carrying goods) and Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) will also be compulsory starting from July 6th, 2024. Specifically, Regulation No. 2019/2144 prohibits the utilization of biometric data to identify driver drowsiness, while allows its application for the validation of these types of systems. The main objective is to develop a validation framework as in compliance as possible with the actual EU Regulations and this is done using MATLAB/Simulink. In particular, the driver’s face and hands are monitored. The secondary goal is to apply this framework to Sensor Reply's driving style monitoring (DSM) solution, which is based on driving style estimation (DSE). In their purpose the driver is tracked based on impaired driving behaviors, using his/her driving style as the main source of information to perform the detection. This work is the result of a collaboration between Politecnico di Torino and Concept Reply.