A Study on Estimating the Variation of Driver's State by EEGs and EOGs

For reasons of convenience and safety, it is important to assess the drivers' workload while using in-vehicle devices. Recently, we proposed a new psychophysiological measure for assessing drivers' attention: eye-fixation-related-potential (EFRP). EFRP is a kind of event-related-brain potential (it were made of brain waves (EEG) and the electrooculographic (EOG)) measurable in normal driving. In the present study, we manipulated the cars' navigation system and measured the affect on drivers attention by measuring EFRPs.

There were two tasks: a voice-activated task (the drivers manipulated the navigation system via voice) and a manual task (the drivers manipulated the navigation system by hand). The results showed that the amplitude of P100 component of EFRP during simulated and actual driving decreased greatly with the manual task when compared to the voice-activated task. This finding implies that drivers can manipulate in-vehicle systems more safely by the voice-activated devices than the manual devices.