Abstract

People never stop pursuing safer and more comfortable driving. An important approach to that goal includes acquiring information about the driver's condition. The vehicle can then respond. However, most previous technologies are not suitable for a driver to use during daily driving. The present research investigates the technologies and sensors that can be utilized to assess a driver's condition, and then employs a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film sensor, a semiconductor temperature sensor and a piezo-resistive sensor to develop a smart wheel. The smart wheel can conveniently and reliably measure the driver's pulse wave, breathing wave, skin temperature and gripping force and does not influence the driver's normal behavior and condition. The driver's condition can be evaluated by using the output of the smart wheel. To verify the wheel's design and how effective it is at measuring the driver's pulse rate, the experimentation behind the present research paper involved thirty subjects to perform 120 experiments under four factorial combinations of gripping force and vibration.