Beyond the Time-on-Task: an EEG-driven approach for effective physiological assessment of mental fatigue in simulated and real driving

Andrea Giorgi^1*Vincenzo Ronca¹Rossella Capotorto¹Alessia Vozzi²Dario Rossi¹Pietro Aricò¹Gianluca Borghini¹Marteyn Van Gasteren³Javier Melus³Marco Petrelli⁴Simone Sportiello⁴Carlo Polidori⁵Manuel Picardi⁶Fabio Babiloni¹Gianluca Di Flumeri^1*

• ¹Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
• ²BrainSigns, Rome, Italy
• ³ITCL, Burgos, Spain
• ⁴Universita degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy
• ⁵AIPSS, Rome, Italy
• ⁶EFA, Bruxelles, Belgium

Fatigue is among the main factors contributing to road accidents. For this reason, in literature extensive effort has been invested in characterizing the fatigue state both physiologically and behaviorally. Due to safety and economic reasons, driving experiments are usually performed in simulated environments. Fatigue is typically induced through prolonged tasks, with fatigued states often defined using a Time-on-Task approach. In this study, we investigated fatigue onset in matched simulated and real driving settings, comparing the common Time-on-Task-driven approach with a novel physiology-driven approach based on EEG parameters to individually label experimental periods of Low and High Fatigue. Using a Time-on-Task approach, no difference emerged between low fatigue and high fatigue periods in the two environments. Conversely, using EEG to define high and low fatigue allowed the observation of a physiological response to fatigue onset in terms of ocular and heart activity. Results demonstrated that the approach adopted to define fatigue could impact on fatigue onset detection. The paper also provides insight into the different manifestations of fatigue in simulated and real driving.