Enhancing in-vehicle safety via contact sensor for stress detection

The number of vehicles on the road as well as the human drive time is increasing significantly. Many drivers are increasing their attempts to multi-task while driving including eating, drinking, entertainment control etc. A relatively new domain has emerged over the last 5 years focused on increased technology in the vehicle based on: GPS navigation systems, traffic, weather warning systems, advanced music/entertainment systems (e.g., MP3, iPod, etc), voice/cell-phone communications, email access and more recently text messaging. Such technology has significantly increased the cognitive stress load and/or distraction levels of drivers, yet little research has focused on this challenge. For communications alone, more than 60% of the cell-phone calls originated from the vehicle in 1997. The focus of the current study is to formulate and evaluate a cognitive stress detection scheme under a cell-phone-like scenario while driving. Also, the current study proposes use of a contact sensor for stress detection. Using a contact sensor, the system accuracy can be as high as 86.52% under matched driver scenario. We propose three proto-designs to incorporate contact sensors to enable both drivers safety and enhance overall in-vehicle safety. Another advantage of using a contact sensor is its ability to also capture drivers physiology (such as heart beat and breathing patterns).