Driver Monitoring

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Driver monitoring studies how to detect states such as drowsiness, distraction, fatigue, impairment, and emotion, and how these signals can inform warnings or vehicle assistance. Methods include facial and gaze analysis, temporal video models, multimodal vision-language systems, and physiological sensing with cameras, wearables, or in-vehicle sensors. Researchers evaluate these approaches on driving datasets and benchmarks such as Drive&Act, AIDE, and DMD, while also testing real-time performance on embedded devices and in naturalistic settings. A central challenge is making systems reliable across drivers, lighting, noise, and changing road conditions without excessive false alarms or sacrificing privacy and efficiency.

Latest papers

30 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, down 40% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

Traffic-Context-Aware Driver Emotion Recognition with Expectation-Deviation-Driven Inference
Oct 24, 2026Longhao Yan, Jinhao Liang, Kaidi YangMultimodal Emotion Recognition Driver Monitoring
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576.
In-Ride Alcohol-Impairment Detection in E-Scooterists with False-Alarm Control
Oct 8, 2026Marco Capuccini, Rahul Rajendra PaiDriver Monitoring
Voi Technology AB, Stockholm, Sweden
Graph-Based Recognition of Simulated Train-Driver States From Facial and Upper-Body Keypoints
Oct 5, 2026Olivia Nocentini, Marta Lagomarsino, Gokhan Solak +6Human Activity Recognition Driver Monitoring
Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via S.Quirico 19d, Genoa, Italy · Department of Bioengineering, Sir Michael Uren Hub Imperial College London 86 Wood Lane London W12 0BZ United Kingdom · Department of Technological Innovations and Safety of Plants, Products and Anthropic Settlements, Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work (INAIL), Via R.Ferruzzi 38, Rome, Italy
Eyes on the Road: A Naturalistic Comparison of MTW Rider Gaze in Urban Indian Traffic
Sep 27, 2026Prerak Srivastava, Bhaiya Vaibhaw Kumar, Kavita VemuriVisual Attention Eye Tracking
IIIT Hyderabad Hyderabad, India
TriDrive: Joint Driver, Vehicle, and Road Modeling for Forecasting and Driver Monitoring
Sep 26, 2026Yuhang Wang, Jingxin Yang, Chuheng Wei +4Driver Monitoring Autonomous Driving
University of South Florida · NVIDIA · Purdue University +1
Development of Low-Cost Real-Time Driver Drowsiness Detection System using Eye Centre Tracking and Dynamic Thresholding
Sep 12, 2026Fuzail Khan, Sandeep Sharma, M. R. ArulalanDriver Monitoring
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, India - 575025
Context-Aware Causal Gaze Forecasting for Human-Vehicle Interaction During In-Cabin Tracking Dropouts
Sep 11, 2026Shabnam Shabani, Ghazal FarhaniGaze Estimation Time Series Forecasting
Department of Computer Science Western University London, ON, Canada · National Research Council Canada London, ON, Canada
Observe Before You Alert: Adaptive Driver Alerting with Vision-Language Models
Sep 8, 2026Yuhang Wang, Lingyao Li, Hao ZhouActive Perception VLMs for Autonomous Driving
Department of Civil Engineering University of South Florida United States · School of Information University of South Florida United States
Spatiotemporal Facial Action Unit Detection using Twin Cycle Autoencoders for Driver Monitoring
Jul 18, 2026Sai Sidharth DAutoencoders Facial Action Unit Detection
InCarEmo: A Multimodal Dataset for In-Cabin Emotion Recognition and Driver State Monitoring
Jul 16, 2026Hao Yang, Yanyan Zhao, Kewei Zhao +11Multimodal Robustness Multimodal Emotion Recognition
Harbin Institute of Technology · SERES
Risk-Aware Selective Multimodal Driver Monitoring with Driver-State World Modeling
Jun 25, 2026Daosheng Qiu, Haozhuang Chi, Hao Su +4Selective Prediction World Models
Hubei University, Wuhan, China · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
MS-rPPG: Multi-spectral State Space Model for Remote Photoplethysmography in Driver Monitoring Systems
Jun 19, 2026Jiho Choi, Sang Jun LeeRemote Photoplethysmography Selective SSMs
Division of Electronics and Information Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Republic of Korea
Human-Centered Benchmarking of Driver Monitoring Models
Jun 6, 2026Ruben Dario Florez-ZelaExplainability Evaluation Driver Monitoring
Universidad Nacional de San Agustin de Arequipa (UNSA) Arequipa, Peru
Multi-modal Video Representation Alignment for Robust Self-supervised Driver Distraction Detection
Jun 1, 2026David J. Lerch, Livien Majer, Zeyun Zhong +3Multimodal Robustness Cross-Modal Alignment
Fraunhofer IOSB, Karlsruhe, Germany · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
Vision-language Models for Driver Monitoring Systems: A Driver Activity Description Dataset
Jun 1, 2026David J. Lerch, Sarath Mulugurthi, Manuel Martin +2VLM Evaluation VLM Adaptation
Fraunhofer IOSB, Karlsruhe, Germany · Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
Detecting Drunk Driving Using Off-the-Shelf Smartwatches
May 22, 2026Robin Deuber, Lanlan Yang, Michal Bechny +9Wearable Sensing Driver Monitoring
ETH Zürich, Switzerland · University of Zürich, Switzerland · University of Bern, Switzerland +2
EyeCue: Driver Cognitive Distraction Detection via Gaze-Empowered Egocentric Video Understanding
May 8, 2026Lang Zhang, JinYi Yoon, Matthew Corbett +2Egocentric Video Understanding Multimodal Fusion
Virginia Tech · Inha University · Army Cyber Institute at West Point
From Review to Design: Ethical Multimodal Driver Monitoring Systems for Risk Mitigation, Incident Response, and Accountability in Automated Vehicles
May 7, 2026Bilal Khana, Waseem Shariff, Rory Coyne +2AI Accountability Autonomous Driving
C3I Imaging Lab, School of Engineering, University of Galway · Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Optimize-at-Capture: Highly-adaptive Exposure Controlling for In-Vehicle Non-contact Heart-rate Monitoring
May 6, 2026Jieying Wang, Xinqi Cai, Caifeng Shan +1Remote Photoplethysmography Driver Monitoring
Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518000, China · State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology and School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Low-Latency Embedded Driver Monitoring System with a Multi-Task Neural Network
May 4, 2026Carmelo Scribano, Giovanni Cappelletti, Elia Giacobazzi +3Efficient Neural Network Inference Driver Monitoring
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Improving Driver Drowsiness Detection via Personalized EAR/MAR Thresholds and CNN-Based Classification
Apr 24, 2026Gökdeniz Ersoy, Mehmet Alper Tatar, Eray Tonbul +1Driver Monitoring
MEF University, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, Huzur Mah, Maslak Ayazağa Cd. No:4, 34396 Sarıyer/İstanbul
Low-Cost System for Automatic Recognition of Driving Pattern in Assessing Interurban Mobility using Geo-Information
Apr 16, 2026Oscar Romero, Aika Silveira Miura, Lorena Parra +1Intelligent Transportation Systems Driver Monitoring
Drowsiness-Aware Adaptive Autonomous Braking System based on Deep Reinforcement Learning for Enhanced Road Safety
Apr 15, 2026Hossem Eddine Hafidi, Elisabetta De Giovanni, Teodoro Montanaro +3Autonomous Driving RL for Autonomous Driving
University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. · Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Lecce, Italy. · Basque Center for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), Bilbao, Spain
Human Centered Non Intrusive Driver State Modeling Using Personalized Physiological Signals in Real World Automated Driving
Apr 13, 2026David Puertas-Ramirez, Raul Fernandez-Matellan, David Martin Gomez +1Driver Monitoring
UNED, Spain · UC3M, Spain
HST-HGN: Heterogeneous Spatial-Temporal Hypergraph Networks with Bidirectional State Space Models for Global Fatigue Assessment
Apr 9, 2026Changdao Chen, Qinqiuhong Ye, Hao Chen +1Heterogeneous GNNs Hypergraph Neural Networks
School of Computer Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University Xi’an, Shaanxi, China · School Of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University Xi’an, Shaanxi, China · Xi’an Jiaotong University Health Science Center Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
Cognitive-Causal Multi-Task Learning with Psychological State Conditioning for Assistive Driving Perception
Apr 8, 2026Keito Inoshita, Nobuhiro Hayashida, Akira ImanishiMulti-Task Learning Autonomous Driving Perception
Kansai University, 3-3-35, Yamatecho, Suita, Osaka, Japan 564-8680 · ISUZU Advanced Engineering Center, Ltd., 8, Tsuchidana, Fujisawa City, Kanagawa, Japan 252-0881
A Two-stage Transformer Framework for Temporal Localization of Distracted Driver Behaviors
Mar 22, 2026Gia-Bao Doan, Nam-Khoa Huynh, Minh-Nhat-Huy Ho +3Driver Monitoring Temporal Video Understanding
Department of Information Technology FPT University Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam · Faculty of Electronics Technology Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam · School of Computer Science and Engineering The Saigon International University Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam
AIoT-based Continuous, Contextualized, and Explainable Driving Assessment for Older Adults
Feb 28, 2026Yimeng Liu, Fangwei Zhang, Maolin Gan +9Driver Monitoring
Michigan State University, USA · University of California San Diego, USA
Thermal Imaging for Contactless Cardiorespiratory and Sudomotor Response Monitoring
Feb 12, 2026Constantino Álvarez Casado, Mohammad Rahman, Sasan Sharifipour +4Thermal Imaging Heart Rate Estimation
Center for Machine Vision and Signal Analysis (CMVS), University of Oulu, Finland · Candour Ltd, Oulu, Finland
Zero-Shot Distracted Driver Detection via Vision Language Models with Double Decoupling
Jan 13, 2026Takamichi Miyata, Sumiko Miyata, Andrew MorrisVision-Language Models Autonomous Driving Perception
Chiba Institute of Technology · Chiba, Japan · Institute of Science Tokyo +3

Oct 24, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

Traffic-Context-Aware Driver Emotion Recognition with Expectation-Deviation-Driven Inference

Longhao Yan, Jinhao Liang, Kaidi Yang

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576.

Multimodal Emotion Recognition Driver Monitoring

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Driver emotion provides an important indication of how drivers perceive and evaluate ongoing traffic situations, making reliable emotion recognition an important capability for effective human-vehicle interaction. Yet, most existing driver emotion recognition approaches rely primarily on in-cabin images and overlook how surrounding traffic interactions shape driver emotional responses. To address this limitation, we propose a traffic-context-aware driver emotion recognition (TADER) framework that integrates in-cabin signals with out-of-cabin traffic scenarios, modeling driver emotions as arising from expectation deviation represented by the discrepancy between predicted and observed vehicle trajectories. The proposed framework comprises two key components: (1) a vision-based base recognizer that extracts spatiotemporal representations from in-cabin facial images to infer driver emotions, and (2) a traffic-context-aware fusion module that quantifies expectation deviation from external traffic scenarios and integrates it into the base recognizer via attention-based embedding fusion. To overcome the scarcity of paired in-cabin and out-of-cabin data, we introduce a transfer learning strategy that transfers a trajectory prediction model trained on large-scale naturalistic datasets to smaller paired datasets. Extensive experiments demonstrate that TADER consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods across both naturalistic and simulated driving environments by incorporating traffic context information into emotion recognition, resulting in improvements of 5% in accuracy on the AIDE and manD datasets.