In-vehicle Sensing and Data Analysis for Older Drivers with Mild Cognitive Impairment

TL;DR

This study develops a low-cost in-vehicle sensing system and uses machine learning to detect early signs of mild cognitive impairment in older drivers by analyzing their daily driving patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hardware setup for unobtrusive monitoring and identifies key behavioral indicators and influential factors for early cognitive decline detection.

Findings

Drivers with MCI exhibit smoother, safer driving patterns

Night trips, trip frequency, and education level are key indicators

Machine learning models can predict cognitive impairment from driving data

Abstract

Driving is a complex daily activity indicating age and disease related cognitive declines. Therefore, deficits in driving performance compared with ones without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can reflect changes in cognitive functioning. There is increasing evidence that unobtrusive monitoring of older adults driving performance in a daily-life setting may allow us to detect subtle early changes in cognition. The objectives of this paper include designing low-cost in-vehicle sensing hardware capable of obtaining high-precision positioning and telematics data, identifying important indicators for early changes in cognition, and detecting early-warning signs of cognitive impairment in a truly normal, day-to-day driving condition with machine learning approaches. Our statistical analysis comparing drivers with MCI to those without reveals that those with MCI exhibit smoother and safer driving patterns. This suggests that drivers with MCI are cognizant of their condition and tend to avoid erratic driving behaviors. Furthermore, our Random Forest models identified the number of night trips, number of trips, and education as the most influential factors in our data evaluation.