MUSE: Multimodal Uncertainty-Based Self-Driven Evolution for Robust Physiological-Signal–Based Driver Fatigue Detection

Abstract Precise detection of driver mental fatigue is critical for reducing traffic accidents and enhancing road safety. Compared with vision-based detection—which is susceptible to illumination and occlusion—multimodal physiological‑signal-based approaches integrate complementary information from diverse biosignals, delivering more faithful and objective fatigue assessments. However, adverse factors such as motion artifacts and environmental noise induce ceaseless deterioration to physiological signals, which markedly degrade the performance of existing multimodal fusion methods. To address this challenge, we propose Multimodal Uncertainty-based Self-driven Evolution, MUSE, reallocating modality contributions in real time via overall uncertainty minimization, thereby enabling efficient collaborative fusion of multi‐source predictions. Theoretically, MUSE guarantees a provably bounded cumulative error, and its generalization error approaches the Bayesian‑optimal fusion as iterations progress. Operating in a closed loop without labels or manual recalibration, MUSE presents superior suitability for real‑world driving scenarios compared to supervised algorithms. On the large‑scale driving fatigue dataset SEED‑VIG, MUSE outperforms existing models in both classification and regression tasks, substantiating its robustness and practicality as a promising driving fatigue detection solution.