In non-intrusive type fatigue detection system, getting information of the steering wheel grip force and pressure on different types of road and speed of the vehicle might be useful to the vehicle designer from safety point of view. This study estimated driver fatigue using static simulator steering wheel grip pressure and correlate it with the muscle fatigue determined using surface electromyography (sEMG). It was observed during entire driving process that force trajectory was acting on the lumbrical muscles which are base of all the fingers of both the hands which implies that maximum pressure was acted by lumbrical muscles on the steering wheel. In this study, grip pressure sensor, a non-intrusive method was used as a tool to estimate fatigue and the results were also supported with sEMG study, a “gold standard” fatigue estimation method. The study revealed very much similar result as the events of occurrence of fatigue in drivers were almost same. The findings of this study would be useful in developing a non-intrusive driver fatigue detection system to reduce road accidents.
Reference
1. R. Bhardwaj, N Singh, M. Jagannath and V. Balasubramanian, “Assessment of human hand grasp and release movement using sEMG,” International Conference on Human Factors and Ergonomics, HWWE 2011, December 15–17, p. 99, 2011.