Non-Intrusive ECG Measurement on Vehicle Steering Wheel and Driver Seat

Driver drowsiness is one of the major causes of deadly traffic accidents. Continuous monitoring of drivers’ drowsiness thus is of great importance for preventing drowsiness-caused accidents. Previous psychophysiological studies have shown that heart rate variability (HRV) has established differences between waking and sleep stages [1, 2]. This offers a way to detect driver’s drowsiness by analyzing HRV, which is typically measured and analyzed from electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. Although ECG measurement techniques are well developed, most of them involve electrode contacts on chest or head. Wiring and discomfort problems inherent in those techniques prevent implementing them on cars. To address these problems, we make full use of the environment settings in a car to develop two non-intrusive real-time ECG measurement methods for drivers.