Driving simulator for performance monitoring with physiological sensors

摘要

This paper describes a driving monitoring system based on a car driving simulator, specifically built for this project, using inexpensive off-the-shelf game technology (software and hardware). The project aims to study the effect of drowsiness (caused by fatigue, alcohol consumption, etc.) in driving performance and how it can be detected in advance in order to mitigate accidents. To achieve this, the system is continuously monitoring driver's physiological signals (e.g., heart rate) as well as her/his driving behavior. Electrocardiography (ECG) signal plays a central role in this project, since a feature derived from it - the HRV (Heart Rate Variability), more concretely its power spectral distribution - is used to continuously estimate the driver's degree of awareness and therefore for generation of alarms. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed system is discussed through the presentation of some experimental results.