Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have gained prominence in wireless sensor technology, featuring resource-limited sensor nodes deployed in challenging underwater environments. To address challenges like power consumption, network lifetime, node deployment, topology, and propagation delays, cooperative transmission protocols like co-operative (Co-UWSN) and co-operative energy-efficient routing (CEER) have been proposed. These protocols utilize broadcast capabilities and neighbor head node (NHN) selection for cooperative routing. This research introduces NBEER, a novel neighbor-based energy-efficient routing protocol tailored for UWSNs. NBEER aims to surpass the limitations of Co-UWSN and CEER by optimizing NHNS and cooperative mechanisms to achieve load balancing and enhance network performance. Through comprehensive MATLAB simulations, we evaluated NBEER against Co-UWSN and CEER, demonstrating its superior performance across various metrics. NBEER significantly maximizes end-to-end delay, reduces energy consumption, improves packet delivery ratio, extends network lifetime, and enhances total received packets analysis compared to the existing protocols.

It is critical for intelligent vehicles to be capable of monitoring the health and well-being of the drivers they transport on a continuous basis. This is especially true in the case of autonomous vehicles. To address the issue, an automatic system is developed for driver’s real emotion recognizer (DRER) using deep learning. The emotional values of drivers in indoor vehicles are symmetrically mapped to image design in order to investigate the characteristics of abstract expressions, expression design principles, and an experimental evaluation is conducted based on existing research on the design of driver facial expressions for intelligent products. By substituting a custom-created CNN features learning block with the base 11 layers CNN model in this paper for the development of an improved faster R-CNN face detector that detects the driver’s face at a high frame per second (FPS). Transfer learning is performed in the NasNet large CNN model in order to recognize the driver’s various emotions. Additionally, a custom driver emotion recognition image dataset is being developed as part of this research task. The proposed model, which is a combination of an improved faster R-CNN and transfer learning in NasNet-Large CNN architecture for DER based on facial images, enables greater accuracy than previously possible for DER based on facial images. The proposed model outperforms some recently updated state-of-the-art techniques in terms of accuracy. The proposed model achieved the following accuracy on various benchmark datasets: JAFFE 98.48%, CK+ 99.73%, FER-2013 99.95%, AffectNet 95.28%, and 99.15% on a custom-developed dataset.

Driver emotion classification is an important topic that can raise awareness of driving habits because many drivers are overconfident and unaware of their bad driving habits. Drivers will acquire insight into their poor driving behaviors and be better able to avoid future accidents if their behavior is automatically identified. In this paper, we use different models such as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and multi-layer perceptron classification models to construct an ensemble convolutional neural network-based enhanced driver facial expression recognition model. First, the faces of the drivers are discovered using the faster region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) model, which can recognize faces in real-time and offline video reliably and effectively. The feature-fusing technique is utilized to integrate the features extracted from three CNN models, and the fused features are then used to train the suggested ensemble classification model. To increase the accuracy and efficiency of face detection, a new convolutional neural network block (InceptionV3) replaces the improved Faster R-CNN feature-learning block. To evaluate the proposed face detection and driver facial expression recognition (DFER) datasets, we achieved an accuracy of 98.01%, 99.53%, 99.27%, 96.81%, and 99.90% on the JAFFE, CK+, FER-2013, AffectNet, and custom-developed datasets, respectively. The custom-developed dataset has been recorded as the best among all under the simulation environment.

Car crashes are among the top ten leading causes of death; they could mainly be attributed to distracted drivers. An advanced driver-assistance technique (ADAT) is a procedure that can notify the driver about a dangerous scenario, reduce traffic crashes, and improve road safety. The main contribution of this work involved utilizing the driver’s attention to build an efficient ADAT. To obtain this “attention value”, the gaze tracking method is proposed. The gaze direction of the driver is critical toward understanding/discerning fatal distractions, pertaining to when it is obligatory to notify the driver about the risks on the road. A real-time gaze tracking system is proposed in this paper for the development of an ADAT that obtains and communicates the gaze information of the driver. The developed ADAT system detects various head poses of the driver and estimates eye gaze directions, which play important roles in assisting the driver and avoiding any unwanted circumstances. The first (and more significant) task in this research work involved the development of a benchmark image dataset consisting of head poses and horizontal and vertical direction gazes of the driver’s eyes. To detect the driver’s face accurately and efficiently, the You Only Look Once (YOLO-V4) face detector was used by modifying it with the Inception-v3 CNN model for robust feature learning and improved face detection. Finally, transfer learning in the InceptionResNet-v2 CNN model was performed, where the CNN was used as a classification model for head pose detection and eye gaze angle estimation; a regression layer to the InceptionResNet-v2 CNN was added instead of SoftMax and the classification output layer. The proposed model detects and estimates head pose directions and eye directions with higher accuracy. The average accuracy achieved by the head pose detection system was 91%; the model achieved a RMSE of 2.68 for vertical and 3.61 for horizontal eye gaze estimations.

In medical environments, a wireless body sensor network (WBSN) is used to operate remotely, and sensor nodes are employed. It consists of sensor nodes installed on a human body to monitor a patient’s condition, such as heartbeat, temperature, and blood sugar level, and are functionalized and controlled by remote devices. A WBSN consists of nodes that are actually sensors in nature and are operated with a short range of communication. These sensor nodes are fixed with limited computation power and the main concern is energy consumption and path loss. In this paper, we propose a new protocol named energy-efficient distance- and link-aware body area (EEDLABA) with a clustering mechanism and compare it with the current link-aware and energy-efficient body area (LAEEBA) and distance-aware relaying energy-efficient (DARE) routing protocols in a WBSN. The proposed protocol is an extended type of LAEEBA and DARE in which the positive features have been deployed. The clustering mechanism has been presented and deployed in EEDLABA for better performance. To solve these issues in LAEEBA and DARE, the EEDLABA protocol has been proposed to overcome these. Path loss and energy consumption are the major concerns in this network. For that purpose, the path loss and distance models are proposed in which the cluster head (CH) node, coordinator (C) node, and other nodes, for a total of nine nodes, are deployed on a human body. The results have been derived from MATLAB simulations in which the performance of the suggested EEDLABA has been observed in assessment with the LAEEBA and DARE. From the results, it has been concluded that the proposed protocol can perform well in the considered situations for WBSNs.

The lack of skid resistance performance is a crucial factor leading to road traffic accidents. The pavement surface friction is an essential indicator for measuring the skid resistance. The surface texture structure significantly affects the friction between the tire and the pavement, determining the pavement skid resistance. To deeply study the relationship between surface texture structure and pavement skid resistance performance, two types of asphalt mixture specimens, asphalt concrete (AC) and open-graded friction course (OGFC), are prepared for the skid resistance performance test. Firstly, a high-precision 3D smart sensor Gocator 3110 is used to collect the 3D point cloud data of the asphalt mixture surface texture. The British pendulum tester is used to measure the friction. Secondly, ten feature parameters are extracted to describe the 3D macrotexture characteristics. A data set containing 10 features and 200 groups of texture and friction data was also constructed. Meanwhile, the influence of macro-texture features on the skid resistance performance is discussed. Finally, an optimized Bayesian-LightGBM model is trained based on the constructed dataset. Compared with LightGBM, XGBoost, RF, and SVR algorithms, the Bayesian-LightGBM model can evaluate skid resistance more accurately. The R² value of the proposed model is 92.83%. The research results prove that ten macrotexture features contribute to the evaluation of skid resistance to varying degrees. Furthermore, compared with AC mixture specimen, the texture surface of OGFC mixture specimen has more obvious height characteristics and higher roughness. The skid resistance of OGFC mixture specimens is better than that of AC.