Feasibility and Necessity of Affective Computing in Emotion Sensing of Drivers for Improved Road Safety

Abstract

The development of the automobile industry and civilian infrastructures improved the lifestyles of everyone in the world. In parallel to the rise in quality of life of everyone, the number of road accidents also rose. The major reason behind road accidents is emotional factors of the drivers. The emotional imbalance will influence the drivers to abandon the traffic rules, neglect speed limits, cross the signals, cross the lane, etc. Recently automobile industries have extended their researches to the development of emotion sensing systems and embedding them inside the vehicles using affective computing technology to mitigate the road accidents. These emotion sensing systems will be decisive and act as human-like driver-assistive systems in alarming the drivers. This chapter focuses on bringing out the feasibility and existing challenges of affective computing in sensing the emotional factors of drivers for improved road safety.