Physiological parameters variation during driving simulations

This paper deals with the methodology of using biorobotics principles for creating a new intelligent system, to improve safety in an automobile transportation. Many projects in European Union programs are devoted to the increase of safety in automotive, in order to reduce deaths and accidents down to 50% in the next few years. The project here presented, named PSYCAR (feasibility analysis on a car control system by psychic-physical parameters), aims at a new driving system, where the steering wheel is inserted in an architecture of intelligent sensors, able to monitor the psychophysical state of the driver, in order to avoid accidents due to sleep attacks and microsleeps. All the indications will come from the steering wheel, where the hands and the finger actuate a great part of the car control. Main goal of the research is to define the right parameters for driver's psycho-physical status monitoring during simulated tests. The heart of this paper is the application of multivariate statistics methods for evaluating the correlations between the physiological parameters acquired (EEG, galvanic skin response or resistance, peripheral temperature and heart rate variability).