Vehicle Travel Safety Band: An Eye Blink and Electrocardiogram Monitoring Device for Vehicle Drivers with Integrated Notification System

Abstract

Vehicle drivers are frequently exposed to various health hazards in their day-to-day work. Such occurrence can cause hypertension, fatigue, stress and other negative factors that increase their risk to accidents. The purpose of this study is to construct a travel safety system that would help prevent accidents caused by abnormal heart rate fluctuations and microsleep. The system is composed of three parts: the primary sensing device, the system controller, and the android application. In the android application, the signal sent from both sensors are filtered by a Fast Fourier Transform algorithm. A total of ten trials were conducted to test the system’s effectiveness and functionality for one hour each. Data gathered are then analyzed by paired t-test. Upon conducting survey tests to five categories of vehicle drivers, results show that 88% of the vehicle drivers believe the system’s safety, 87% of its usefulness, and 94% are satisfied with its appearance, thus providing a high acceptance rate. On the other hand, based on the conducted functionality test, 8 out of 10 participants triggered the haptic feedback while using the device. Therefore, the effectiveness and accuracy of the device is 80% of 100%. For further validity, a wave comparison of ideal vs. measured ECG and EMG wave was conducted, of which both waves subjected were identical thus, making it a reasonable basis.