Abstract
Unobtrusive monitoring of drivers’ physiological parameters is a topic gaining interest, potentially allowing to improve the performance of safety systems to prevent accidents, as well as to improve the driver’s experience or provide health-related services. In this article, two unobtrusive sensing techniques are evaluated: capacitively coupled sensing of the electrocardiogram and respiration, and radar-based sensing of heartbeat and respiration. A challenge for use of these techniques in vehicles are the vibrations and other disturbances that occur in vehicles to which they are inherently more sensitive than contact-based sensors. In this work, optimized sensor architectures and signal processing techniques are proposed that significantly improve the robustness to artefacts. Experimental results, conducted under real driving conditions on public roads, demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. R peak sensitivities and positive predictivities higher than 98% both in highway and city traffic, heart rate mean absolute error of 1.02 bpm resp. 2.06 bpm in highway and city traffic and individual beat R-R interval 95% percentile error within ±27.3 ms are demonstrated. The radar experimental results show that respiration can be measured while driving and heartbeat can be recovered from vibration noise using an accelerometer-based motion reduction algorithm.
Highlights
The monitoring of physiological parameters of drivers is becoming an important topic that is attracting the attention of many researchers and companies worldwide
electrical signals generated by the heart (ECG) signals (Lead I) from the driver’s shoulders, as well as respiration signals using a strapped belt around the abdomen
Each subject drove approximately 30 min in city traffic and 30 min in highway traffic. 2 subjects wore two layers of clothing, and 3 subjects wore a single layer of clothing
Summary
The monitoring of physiological parameters of drivers is becoming an important topic that is attracting the attention of many researchers and companies worldwide. When such physiological sensors are combined with complementary non-physiological sensing systems inside a vehicle (e.g., steering wheel and pedal sensors, speed, lane-keeping, collision avoidance, etc.) it potentially allows to improve the performance of safety systems to prevent accidents, as well as to improve the driver’s experience and well-being or provide new services such as for example daily health check-ups during commuting. For such a system to be successfully adopted and used it is essential that the sensors are unobtrusive, i.e., the driver should not have to take any action to connect any sensors to their body. They do not rely on a driver-facing camera, avoiding what may be considered a potential privacy concern for some users
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