Identifying Big Five Personality Traits through Controller Area Network Bus Data

Abstract

As adapting vehicles to drivers’ preferences has become an important focus point in the automotive sector, a more convenient, objective, real-time method for identifying drivers’ personality traits is increasingly important. Only recently has increased availability of driving signals obtained via controller area network (CAN) bus provided new perspectives for investigating personality differences. This study proposes a new methodology for identifying drivers’ Big Five personality traits through driving signals, specifically accelerator pedal angle, frontal acceleration, steering wheel angle, lateral acceleration, and speed. Data were collected from 92 participants who were asked to drive a car along a pre-defined 15 km route. Using statistical methods and the discrete Fourier transform, some time-frequency features related to driving were extracted to establish models for identifying participants’ Big Five personality traits. For these five personality trait dimensions, the coefficients of determination of effective predictive models were between 0.19 and 0.74, the root mean squared errors were between 2.47 and 4.23, and the correlations between predicted scores and self-reported questionnaire scores were considered medium to strong (0.56–0.88). The results showed that personality traits can be revealed through driving signals, and time-frequency features extracted from driving signals are effective in characterizing and identifying Big Five personality traits. This approach could be of potential value in the development of in-car integration or driver assistance systems and indicates a possible direction for further research on convenient psychometric methods.