Measuring workload with electrodermal activity during common braking actions.

How to assess mental load remains a recurrent question. We aimed to explore whether slight differences in real-world driving task demands could be discriminated by electrodermal response (EDR). A sample of 33 participants was observed under five conditions: controlled braking from 50 to 30 km/h, 80 to 50 km/h, 50 to 0 km/h, 80 to 0 km/h, and a single unexpected emergency braking event from 80 to 0 km/h. The likelihood of EDR and, whenever present, its duration were both correlated with workload as represented by the deceleration demand. A higher base travel speed and the unexpected demand of the emergency braking situation impacted EDR, thus attesting higher workload level. EDR explains why stopping the vehicle from 50 km/h and slowing down from 80 to 50 km/h was of similar strain. The results further demonstrate that EDR measures can be successfully employed to discriminate multiple levels of workload. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: Common braking elicited different loads as revealed by electrodermal response (EDR) with sensitivity to deceleration of - 0.2 g. Even the slightest braking elicited a strain measurable with EDR. Accordingly, EDR may objectively assess the resulting strain during driving, with enhanced reliability if associated with other variables, e.g. cardiac activity.

Surface electromyography as a tool to assess the responses of car passengers to lateral accelerations. Part II: Objective comparison of vehicles.

The purpose of this study was to objectively assess the response of car passengers to lateral accelerations. Surface EMG signals were collected bilaterally from the cervical erector spinae (CES), latissimus dorsi (LD), erector spinae (ES), external oblique (EO), and vastus lateralis (VL) muscles of 10 subjects. Lateral acceleration was also recorded. Three chassis-seat configurations AA, BA and BB were tested, with the first letter denoting the chassis and the second the seat. SEMG signals were often contaminated by noise, and were, therefore, denoised using the methods explained in part I. Reciprocal phasic activity was observed for all muscles except for the EO, and the reaction of passengers to lateral accelerations was interpreted as a bust torsion. The RMS of EMG segments was used as an indication of muscle activity. Muscle activation of VL and ES were significantly affected by the configuration tested (p<0.05), with greater activation levels observed for the chassis A than for the chassis B. Such a finding implies that greater roll requires greater muscle activity, thus resulting in less comfortable vehicles. Therefore, SEMG can be used to provide an objective measure of discomfort in passengers subjected to lateral accelerations in a car seat.