Using Recurrent Neural Networks for Action and Intention Recognition of Car Drivers

Traffic situations leading up to accidents have been shown to be greatly affected by human errors. To reduce these errors, warning systems such as Driver Alert Control, Collision Warning and Lane Departure Warning have been introduced. However, there is still room for improvement, both regarding the timing of when a warning should be given as well as the time needed to detect a hazardous situation in advance. Two factors that affect when a warning should be given are the environment and the actions of the driver. This study proposes an artificial neural network-based approach consisting of a convolutional neural network and a recurrent neural network with long short-term memory to detect and predict different actions of a driver inside a vehicle. The network achieved an accuracy of 84% while predicting the actions of the driver in the next frame, and an accuracy of 58% 20 frames ahead with a sampling rate of approximately 30 frames per second.