HCI applications for professional driver seats and their impact to driver's health and efficiency

摘要

Low frequency (4 to 6 Hz) cyclic motrons, like those caused by a vehicle's tires hitting the road, can put the human body into resonance. Just one hour of seated vibration exposure can cause muscle fatigue, weaken the soft tissue and make a worker more susceptible to back injury. Truck drivers, agricultural machinery operators, traveling sales representatives, subway operators, tractor drivers and construction vehicle operators are common victims of back problems. Truck drivers are four times more likely to have a herniated disk and tractor drivers with more than 700 driving hours per year have 61% pathologic changes in the spine. Thus, one million back injuries occur per year in USA alone, costing around $90 billion, whereas there are 5,4 million Americans with low back pain disabilities. To face this serious problem, SAFEGUARD project is co-funded by EU (DG RESEARCH), as part of Quality of Life program, aiming at integrating assistive technology in ergonomic seat design with modern sensor and in-vehicle informatics technology, to develop a new generation of adaptable, ergonomic and yet affordable heavy vehicle seats. To reach this goal, a 3D anthropometrical FEM and VR model of professional driver is built, a new modular seat assessment methodology is developed and several VR mock-ups are realized and tested in 10 Pilots Europe-wide. One of the key elements of the new seat characteristics is that it will include innovative user interface elements (display screens, sounds, haptic elements) to control the various seat functionalities. Furthermore, the seat will be autonomously adaptable to key driver's characteristics and even to the traffic scenario, based upon stochastic optimization algorithms. Following the "design for all" approach, SAFEGUARD Consortium bases the seat requirements and design on the needs not only of healthy but also of drivers with back problems. For this reason E&D users will participate also in the project tests to guarantee the optimum performance of the system for all users. Furthermore, the developed know-how is expected to have significant secondary applications in the field of ergonomic chairs and wheelchairs for mobility impaired people, and especially seat adaptations for E&D drivers and travelers.