ANGELS - Smart Steering Wheel for Driver Safety

The automotive industry increasingly recognizes the importance of human-machine interaction in enhancing the driving experience and improving driver safety. Human factors, such as drowsiness and attention deficits, play a primary role in safe driving. There are several research and commercial solutions to address these issues. However, they analyze vehicle behavior and are unable to assess the driver’s state in a timely manner. A novel approach to this problem is to monitor the driver’s physiological signals. In this context, Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a noninvasive technique that monitors cardiac activity and can provide information regarding the driver’s state. This work introduces ANGELS, an embedded system that exploits PPG signals to monitor drivers in a non-invasive way. ANGELS is a low-cost and low-power system that can be integrated into the steering wheel of a car. It acquires and processes the driver’s PPG signals in real-time and enables heart rate monitoring without requiring accelerometer data to remove motion artifacts. We perform an experimental assessment using the Maserati driving simulator. ANGELS features a mean absolute error on heart rate detection of 1.19 BPM with a latency of 10 s and power consumption of only 130 mW. These results demonstrate that it is a reliable and promising solution for improving driver safety.