Modeling and analysis of drivers’ visually interesting area

The existing studies on driver’s vision all focus on single factors of driver’s eye movement, failing to consider the visual search in multiple dimensions. To solve the problem, this paper views the driver’s visual search as the combination of such four indices as fixation distribution (x, y, z) and fixation duration. The concept of visually interesting area (VIA) was proposed to analysis of the visual search, which contains two indices: the area and the barycentric coordinates. Then, field tests were carried out to acquire the eye movement indices, and the area and barycentric coordinates of the VIA were calculated on Matlab. On this basis, the visual information was classified as highway alignment, driving speed and traffic flow, all of which affect the driver’s attention. Finally, a nonlinear regression model about VIA was constructed. It is concluded that the maximum driving speed and the maximum number of vehicles in the VIA ahead were 117km/h and 5 respectively.