Vigilance estimation using truncated l1 distance kernel-based sparse representation regression with physiological signals.

Background: With a large number of accidents caused by the decline in the vigilance of operators, finding effective automatic vigilance monitoring methods is a work of great significance in recent years. Based on physiological signals and machine learning algorithms, researchers have opened up a path for objective vigilance estimation.

Methods: Sparse representation (SR)-based recognition algorithms with excellent performance and simple models are very promising approaches in this field. This paper aims to study the adaptability and performance improvement of truncated l distance (TL1) kernel on SR-based algorithm in the context of physiological signal vigilance estimation. Compared with the traditional radial basis function (RBF), the TL1 kernel has good adaptiveness to nonlinearity and is suitable for the discrimination of complex physiological signals. A recognition framework based on TL1 and SR theory is proposed. Firstly, the inseparable physiological features are mapped to the reproducing kernel Kreĭn space through the infinite-dimensional projection of the TL1 kernel. Then the obtained kernel matrix is converted into the symmetric positive definite matrix according to the eigenspectrum approaches. Finally, the final prediction result is obtained through the sparse representation regression process.

Results: We verified the performance of the proposed framework on the popular SEED-VIG dataset containing physiological signals (electroencephalogram and electrooculogram) associated with vigilance. In the experimental results, the TL1 kernel is superior to the RBF kernel in both performance and kernel parameter stability.

Conclusions: This demonstrates the effectiveness of the TL1 kernel in distinguishing physiological signals and the excellent vigilance estimation capability of the proposed framework. Moreover, the contribution of our research motivates the development of physiological signal recognition based on kernel methods.