HARKEN · Heart and respiration in-car embedded nonintrusive sensors

Road accidents are a major safety problem in developed countries, and fatigue is one of the critical factors. In-vehicle fatigue detectors can reduce this problem, saving 4,000 lives and preventing tens of thousand injuries every year in the EU, which in economical terms would imply annual savings of €7 Billion. For this reason, automotive OEM and TIER 1 are striving to achieve good solutions for automatic fatigue detection, but current approaches have strong limitations, because they lack the direct information about drivers’ physiological variables, which are critical for a successful evaluation of their state.This project gathers a consortium of SMEs that produce vehicle components (seat cover textiles and safety belts), smart materials, and sensors for biomonitoring, who will create a product to address that need. They will join their experience to create a nonintrusive sensor system of heart and respiration with smart materials, embedded in the seat cover and the safety belt of a car. This device will detect the effect of heart and respiration activity, filter and cancel the noise and artefacts expected in a moving vehicle, and calculate the relevant parameters, which will be delivered in a readable format to integrate it in a fatigue detector. The achievement of this objective will require to perform a research to develop new sensing materials, and create a signal processing unit to filter and process the data.This project will provide the SMEs with new, high technology products to sell in their sectors, and will help them to enter or improve their position in the automotive market, with a new device that will enable the creation of reliable fatigue detectors.""