Unobtrusive Driver's Attitude Monitoring Through an Instrumented Steering Wheel

Minimally invasive monitoring of driver's attitude during driving may be relevant to enable early detection of potentially dangerous conditions, thus resulting in a reduction of drowsy-driving incidents, injuries, and fatalities, among others. This paper presents the design, prototype implementation, and experimental testing of an instrumented steering wheel (SW) equipped with both spatially distributed force sensors and inertial sensors, to collect data regarding the driving attitude. The SW also features skin conductance electrodes to acquire physiological markers of the driver's status. The results obtained from tests carried out with ten volunteers show that it is possible to understand the driving attitude from the location of the driver's hands, while the acquisition of the skin conductance requires proper countermeasures against motion artifacts. In fact, a discrepancy between the number of peaks detected from the sensor integrated into the steering and a wearable one is evidenced.