CHENNAI: Fatigued drivers slumping at the wheel can be alerted by sensors embedded in car seats which raise an alarm, suggests a study by scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras The sensors record the electrical activity in the driver's heart through the process of capacitive electrocardiography (cECG). Unlike the regular ECGs in doctors' clinics, these machines do not have electrodes that are stuck to the skin. Instead, sensors are placed inside the car seat's fabric."One of the easiest methods of finding brain activity is to do an electroencephalogram or EEG. The brain activity when a person is awake is completely different to that in a state of drowsiness. But for this a person has to be wired. It may not work inside a car," said professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian, department of engineering design, IIT-M, who led the research. "Our study showed contact-free cECG to be one of the best surrogates for EEG," he said. The study was published in the scientific journal Transportation Research published by Elsevier Balasubramanian, who is also an advisor to the Tamil Nadu Accident and Emergency Initiative (TAEI), says fatigue, besides speed, is one of the leading causes of road accidents globally. "Every vehicle manufacturer is looking at ways to prevent accidents due to driver fatigue. Now, we have the technology to do that. Manufacturers have the option of alerting the driver by raising an alarm, providing interventions in vehicle, informing the fleet operator, taking control of the car to bring it to a halt or alerting the nearest control room. The options are plenty and can be picked by the manufacturer or fleet operator," he said.Between January and June 2018, there were 33,026 road accidents in the state that left 6,510 people dead and 3,044 with grievous injuries, according to data from the home department. Although the deaths and injuries have come down, there is no significant reduction in the number of accidents, officials say.At the RBG Labs at IIT Madras, 35 volunteers participated in a study where they drove in a simulated environment for about two hours sitting on a cECG embedded car seat to detect drowsiness from the electrical activity of the heart.Apart from the sensors, there was a console programmed to calculate fatigue based on the electric activity of the brain -- such as the progression of alpha, beta and theta waves. The volunteers were strapped to EEGs and measurements were taken on both pieces of equipment. At the end of two hours, the cECG and EEG results were analysed. "It's a complicated mathematical process, but at the end we found that cECG can be used as a surrogate for EEG to detect fatigue," he said.

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