Printed and Flexible ECG Electrodes Attached to the Steering Wheel for Continuous Health Monitoring during Driving.

Continuous health monitoring in a vehicle enables the earlier detection of symptoms of cardiovascular diseases. In this work, we designed flexible and thin electrodes made of polyurethane for long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring while driving. We determined the time for reliable ECG recording to evaluate the effectiveness of the electrodes. We recorded data from 19 subjects under four scenarios: rest, city, highway, and rural. The recording time was five min for rest and 15 min for the other scenarios. The total recording (950 min) is publicly available under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. We used the simultaneous truth and performance level estimation (STAPLE) algorithm to detect the position of R-waves. Then, we derived the RR intervals to compare the estimated heart rate with the ground truth, which we obtained from ECG electrodes on the chest. We calculated the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and averaged it for the different scenarios. Highway had the lowest SNR (-6.69 dB) and rural had the highest (-6.80 dB). The usable time of the steering wheel was 42.46% (city), 46.67% (highway), and 47.72% (rural). This indicates that steering-wheel-based ECG recording is feasible and delivers reliable recordings from about 45.62% of the driving time. In summary, the developed electrodes allow continuous in-vehicle heart rate monitoring, and our publicly available recordings provide the opportunity to apply more sophisticated data analytics.

Driver perception of brake notifications under real driving conditions.

The amount of information to be processed by drivers increases with the number of driver assistance systems (DAS). This implies that all relevant perception channels have to be used to convey information. The paper's contribution is to enable system designers to use differences in longitudinal acceleration as an information element in DAS. We conduct a study of the actual application context and examine the perceptible difference in longitudinal acceleration (kinaesthetic distortion). Thereby, we discuss dependencies of the perceptible difference on speed and acceleration immediately before the distortion. Furthermore, we investigate the spread of perceptional performance of different drivers. The results demonstrate smaller perceptible differences in acceleration at higher speed and weaker perception when the acceleration immediately before the warning is greater. This paper aims to provide a guideline for the implementation of brake warnings for informative DAS and for the adaption of the brake intensity according to current vehicle dynamics. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: This paper aims to enable the kinaesthetic perception channel for informative driver assistance systems. A real world driving study reveals the perceptible difference in longitudinal acceleration (kinaesthetic distortion) depending on vehicle speed and acceleration and serves as a guideline for applying brake warnings as an information element in vehicles.

Towards Prediction of Injuries in Traffic Accidents.

For people involved in road traffic accidents, the time necessary to respond is crucial and it is hard to discern, which persons in which cars most urgently need help. To plan the rescue operation before arriving at the scene, digital information regarding the severity of the accident is vital. Our framework aims to transmit available data from the in-car sensors and to simulate the forces enacted on occupants using injury models. To avoid data security and privacy issues, we install low-cost hardware in the car for aggregation and preprocessing. Our framework can be retrofitted to existing cars and therefore could extend the benefits to a wide range of people.