Advances in Human-Machine Systems for In-Vehicle Environments

As computing technology advances, the ability to integrate a wider range of personal services for in-vehicle environments increases. While these advances offer a diverse range of entertainment and information access opportunities, they generally are introduced into the vehicle with limited understanding of their impact to driver distraction and cognitive stress load. As the diversity of speech, video, biometric, and vehicle signals increases, improved corpora and system formulation are needed. In this study, we consider recent advances for in-vehicle human-machine systems for route navigation, noise suppression for robust speech recognition, and driver behavior modeling. Multi-microphone array processing is developed for noise suppression for hands-free communications as well as improved automatic speech recognition for route dialog interaction. Next, advances in modeling driver behavior are considered in the UTDrive project, which is focused on advancing smart vehicle technologies for improved safety while driving. Finally, a general discussion considers next generation advances for in-vehicle environments which sense driver cognitive stress/distraction to adapt interactive systems for improved safety.