Emotion on the Road—Necessity, Acceptance, and Feasibility of Affective Computing in the Car

Abstract

Besides reduction of energy consumption, which implies alternate actuation and light construction, the main research domain in automobile development in the near future is dominated by driver assistance and natural driver-car communication. The ability of a car to understand natural speech and provide a human-like driver assistance system can be expected to be a factor decisive for market success on par with automatic driving systems. Emotional factors and affective states are thereby crucial for enhanced safety and comfort. This paper gives an extensive literature overview on work related to influence of emotions on driving safety and comfort, automatic recognition, control of emotions, and improvement of in-car interfaces by affect sensitive technology. Various use-case scenarios are outlined as possible applications for emotion-oriented technology in the vehicle. The possible acceptance of such future technology by drivers is assessed in a Wizard-Of-Oz user study, and feasibility of automatically recognising various driver states is demonstrated by an example system for monitoring driver attentiveness. Thereby an accuracy of 91.3% is reported for classifying in real-time whether the driver is attentive or distracted.

Employing consumer electronic devices in physiological and emotional evaluation of common driving activities

“…Previous attempts have successfully captured mostly negative valence in various driving conditions [25]. Considering that the high relevance of positive valence to driving was documented by a substantial body of literature [7], future DSM systems could benefit from detection of positive emotions. Therefore, specific scenario mode was designed to elicit positive emotion onto participating drivers.…”

“…Similarly, presence of extensive emotions, especially anger, can make a driver prone to errors and could lead to dangerous driving [6]. Joy or happiness, on the other hand, could be beneficial to driving [7]. Therefore, it is important to equip future vehicles with an onboard system capable of tracking and analysing driver state to be able to mitigate the risk of incorrect vehicle control prior to its actual occurrence, which subsequently has a potential to reduce the number of human error related road accidents.…”

Towards hybrid driver state monitoring: Review, future perspectives and the role of consumer electronics

“…Perspectives and the Role of Consumer Electronics* Happiness, on the other hand, could be beneficial to driving [19]. Clearly, the evidence shows that until a human remains in full or partial control of a vehicle, drivers' state is an important aspect of driving and cannot be neglected due to its critical influence.…”

Audio visual cues in driver affect characterization: Issues and challenges in developing robust approaches

“…Current research and attention theory have suggested that speech-based interactions are less distracting than interaction with visual display [12]. A careful design of effective speech interface can also be potential aid for a drowsy driver [13], [14]. However, [15] suggests that the only safe countermeasure against driving while sleepy is to stop driving.…”