Patent ID: 7880621

Claim:
An apparatus for estimating an attention demand on a person, the person being the operator of a vehicle having a vehicle environment, the apparatus comprising: a first sensor, providing first sensor data related to the vehicle environment; a first adaptive filter, receiving the first sensor data and operable to cluster sensory objects within the first sensor data, so as to provide first clustered object data; a second sensor, providing second sensor data related to the vehicle environment, the first sensor and the second sensor being of different sensor types; a second adaptive filter, receiving the second sensor data and operable to cluster sensory objects within the second sensor data, so as to provide second clustered object data, the first and second clustered object data including an initial number of clustered objects; and a multimodal adaptive filter, receiving the first and second clustered object data and identifying statistical correlations between clustered objects within the first and second clustered object data, the multimodal adaptive filter providing correlative clustering between the first and second clustered object data so as to obtain an output number of attention-demanding objects as an estimate of the attention demand on the person, the correlative clustering between the first and second clustered object data reducing the output number of attention-demanding objects relative to the initial number of clustered objects.