Comparison on driving fatigue related hemodynamics activated by auditory and visual stimulus

As one of the main causes of traffic accidents, driving fatigue deserves researchers’ attention and its detection and monitoring during long-term driving require a new technique to realize. Since functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) can be applied to detect cerebral hemodynamic responses, we can promisingly expect its application in fatigue level detection. Here, we performed three different kinds of experiments on a driver and recorded his cerebral hemodynamic responses when driving for long hours utilizing our device based on fNIRS. Each experiment lasted for 7 hours and one of the three specific experimental tests, detecting the driver’s response to sounds, traffic lights and direction signs respectively, was done every hour. The results showed that visual stimulus was easier to cause fatigue compared with auditory stimulus and visual stimulus induced by traffic lights scenes was easier to cause fatigue compared with visual stimulus induced by direction signs in the first few hours. We also found that fatigue related hemodynamics caused by auditory stimulus increased fastest, then traffic lights scenes, and direction signs scenes slowest. Our study successfully compared audio, visual color, and visual character stimulus in sensitivity to cause driving fatigue, which is meaningful for driving safety management.