Unobtrusive in-vehicle biosignal instrumentation for advanced driver assistance and active safety

In this work, we describe a set of integrated and ambient sensors, that can be used for the identification and evaluation of suitable sensors for the assessment of psychophysiologic driver state. Applications using this information cover a wide spectrum from driver vigilance monitoring to in-car health management. However, application specific, unobtrusive integration of sensors is necessary to keep the driver's distraction at a minimum. Therefore, contact and non-contact based physiological sensors and their integration into the car environment are presented here. Textile capacitive ECG electrodes have been developed and the integration of various physiological sensors into a Mercedes S-Class steering wheel is described. Furthermore, a custom embedded system has been designed to perform data acquisition and online processing of the biosignals and to provide an interface for car information systems.