Project

Unobtrusive ECG recording of drivers is of fundamental interest in many applications. In this pre-study a novel equipment optimized for non-contact ECG acquisition (Plessey Semiconductors; EPIC 2012) will be evaluated in a test-setup including a driver’s seat.   The ECG-signal will be recorded on the back of the seat and from the seatbelt, placing the electrodes on a position close to the heart. Besides a conductive fabric will be placed on the bottom of the seat for the Driven Right Leg (DRL) module of the ECG system. This is visualized in Figure 1 where (A) illustrates a map pressure of the driver’s seat for an average driver, (B) the electrodes position on the seatbelt, and (C) the electrodes position on the seat and a block diagram of the ECG measuring system. From the ECG signal the heart rate will be obtained by applying peak detection to the ECG, using the Pan-Tompkins algorithm (Pan and Tompkins 1985). Furthermore the Respiratory Rate will be obtained from the shape of the ECG using ECG Derived Respiration as developed in (Moody 1985). The equipment as well as various contactless electrodes will be tested on multiple electrode configurations on the seat and the seatbelt aiming for the higher signal quality. Moreover subjects will be measured with different clothes on what to evaluate the influence of clothing on the contactless ECG quality.