An Evaluation Method of Safe Driving for Senior Adults Using ECG Signals

Figures

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  Figure 1. Illustration of the SDI and CRT, which are correlated interactions between (A) and (B). It is an important measure to evaluate safe driving ability. The portable Shimmer3 EEG unit(Shimmer, Dublin, Ireland) was used to monitor the ECG signal while driving (C).

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  Figure 2. Experimental stages. Data were collected over the course of 11 minutes divided into three stages. During the main stage of the experiment (stressful driving; 500 seconds), the subjects were instructed to drive a vehicle on a difficult course with sharp turns. During the initial (before-driving) and final (after-driving) stages of the experiment, the subjects were instructed to relax.

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  Figure 3. Sample ECG original signals that exhibit big differences between young and elderly subjects. The QRS amplitude of elderly people tends to be weaker than that of young people.

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  Figure 4. #n points of maximum acceleration within MTW (30 s, Maximum Time Window). These moments were considered to be most stressful driving moment, which cause heart palpitations.

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  Figure 5. Main algorithm of SDI/CRT.

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  Figure 6. Procedure for obtaining the SDI and CRT. As shown here, the SDI is originated from the acceleration value and the CRT is the averaged distance between maximum the acceleration value within the MTW and each clustering heart palpitations RR interval value.

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  Figure 7. Histogram of the heart palpitation summation at every acceleration value per 0.1 m/s2. As shown here, the safe driving intensity value is 3.1 according to the highest gap obtained using this method.