A group of engineers in Spain are working on a seatbelt that can monitor the driver's heart rate and alert them to pull over in order to prevent driver fatigue-related accidents.
The project is being run by Harken, a consortium funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Program, and has been under development for a few years, according to mobilehealthnews. The consortium is made up of organizations from Spain, Portugal, Germany, Estonia, the U.K., and other countries across Europe.
The research team discovered they could figure out whether a driver is concentrated and feels awake based on their heart rate, and that the slowing of breath was a sign of being tired from driving for too long.
The new system is called Harken, and can keep track of heart rate and wake drivers up if they sense they are falling asleep behind the wheel, The Telegraph reported. When the device detects that heart rate and breathing rate is slowing down, it issues an alarm to pull over to keep the driver from falling asleep and getting into an accident. A special seat cover is also used to provide a second reading.
"The variation in heart and respiratory rate are good indicators of the state of the driver as they are related to fatigue," said Jose Solaz from the Biomechanics Institute in Valencia, Spain.
"So when people go into a state of fatigue or drowsiness, modifications appear in their breathing and heart rate. (The device) can monitor those variables and therefore warn the driver before the symptoms appear."
The researchers said there are many products available that people could use to fight driver fatigue, but these products have limitations, mobilehealthnews reported. One of these limitations is the use of wearables to measure how tired the driver is, while the Harken consortium thinks fatigue should be monitored without attracting attention.
The team published a paper about the high-tech seatbelt and seat cover, stating the next step is to integrate the sensors from the devices into parts of the car.
"Even though the sensing materials are created for textile applications, the aesthetic, functional and safety requirements of the automotive industry for the materials that are used in car seats and belts are very specific, and it is necessary to find the optimal trade-off," the researchers wrote.
The system has been tested successfully on race circuits, and the team will soon begin testing it in cars on the streets of Spain to make sure it will work in traffic scenarios, The Telegraph reported.
The team believes that adding the seatbelts and seat covers to every car can prevent thousands of deaths across Europe each year. Solaz added that preliminary tests "have led to positive and reliable results, thus, (the device) will help in the near future to reduce accidents."
