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Seat Detects When You're Drowsy, Can Control Your Car
cartechboy (2660665) writes Cars already have the technology to determine when you're drowsy, that's nothing new. But having seats with sensors in them monitoring your heart rate to determine if you're falling asleep, that's new, and creepy. A new project from Nottingham Trent University in the UK is working on an electrocardiogram (ECG) built into the driver's seat to detect heart rate and determine when the driver is too fatigued — or worse, falling asleep — in order to improve road safety. ... The system could take over using active cruise control, lane-keep assist, and other safety technology after warning the drive to pull over. Of course, the creepy part is the car knowing your health and determining whether it would be more fit to drive than you.
I don't really see how this is creepy... Is an ECG with an alarm in a hospital creepy?
No, it's a sensor which can save your life.
They pry control of the steering wheel out of my cold, dead han-------wait. That would actually be a good thing. ;)
They can pry control of the steering wheel out of my cold, dead han---wait. That would actually be a good thing! ;)
We've had this in Germany for years.
Only instead of auto piloting the meeting for you, the chair will electrocute you to wake your ass up so you don't miss out on the important monologues.
hey /.
just want to draw your attention to the fact that a sensor can be programmed to detect your mood and relay signals in real time accordingly
yes...sure this is **applied** to a car for "safety"
what are the other applications?
how long has this technology existed?
what else could be done with this ability and other E-M behavior of the human body?
these are questions you should be asking yourself
Thank you Dave Raggett
Does it come complete, with built-in defibrillator for just-such an emergency?
I wonder if additions like , alarms for texting , talking on the phone , receiving fellatio can be caliberated into this seat . That would be a nice addition . The no. 1 reason for most road accidents is lack of attention . "eyes on the road and hands on the wheel"
the creepy part is the car knowing your health and determining whether it would be more fit to drive than you.
In this case I disagree. The creepy part is that all those intoxicated and fatigued people still take their car. This kind of techonology should not be necessary but clearly it is.
The information could also be sent over a wireless network to a control centre to take further action.
The study has received over £88,000 of funding from the Technology Strategy Board, as part of its investment in the development of internet-enabled sensors communicating with other machines and appliances through an information network, known generally as the Internet of Things.
I'm not interested in your fully networked future.
And, as a general principle, I don't want my car calling the police on me to "take further action."
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why can't the fucking thing just drive me home when I'm drunk or sleepy - really that's what all this car automation stuff is all about. Drunk, sleepy - take me home car.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You know, just like the jolt of adrenaline from almost running off the road, just without the almost running off the road.
Will it drive by the seat of my pants?
This is not the sig you're looking for.
It's all quite useful but the real question is, is there that many deaths / accidents because of drowsiness?
I would think there are statistically higher causes of accidents, like driving without due care and attention or drunk driving.
The tech is good, provided it stops there. We don't need a slew of sensors monitoring our driving habits under the guise of promising lower insurance. Supposing you are in your vehicle and pull into a lay by to have a nap. Is this device going to report you for being asleep at the wheel?
What happens if and when the device malfunctions and you get reported for being asleep at the wheel while speeding down a freeway? How would you fight the hike in insurance? Would you even know or be informed by the insurance company why your insurance premium has spiked?
I had an idea like this to use an instrumentation amp to detect brain waves - when the eyes are closed you get a lot of low freq alpha waves so you can tell if someone is dozing off. I guess this is less intrusive since it's embedded in the seat.
I initially read the title to be referencing Seat, a Russian maker of affordable cars that are common accross Europe, not as the place you put your backside while you are driving. /me chuckles...
"Of course, the creepy part is the car knowing your health and determining whether it would be more fit to drive than you."
Which is naturally...always!
Please let me drive, Car!
I'm afraid, I can't do that, Dave.
Daisyyyyyyy, Daysyyyyyyyyyyyyy.....
How big is the sensor it uses? Will it fit?
"Is the Chief Priest an Offlian? Do dragons explode in the wood?"
I could not read your site, but I found a translation of its history
1979-1950
at
1979-1950
I never knew that Barcelona is a Russian city.
Rio Tinto Coal Australia is currently implementing a similar system, SmartCap, across all of their open-pit mining operations. The system uses a cap or headband as an EEG, and provides a fatigue score in realtime.
The interesting point of difference is that, unlike a lot of other systems, SmartCap tells you that you are at risk *before* you get to the point of having a micro-sleep.
Keeping in mind these operations run 24/7 and people are in control of dump trucks carrying up to 390t of payload, the benefits are obvious. All mining operations have some level of fatigue-related incidents - humans are not built to do night shift.
YouTube - Coal & Allied SmartCap
I don't understand what's "creepy" about any of it.
You want creepy? Seat belts are CREEPY- they touch one of your boobs! Eeeeeeeewwwwwww!
It has been since 1994, when East Spain joined the Warsaw Pact.
What do you mean, 'creepy'? This is a function that automatically switches on existing systems (adaptive cruise control, lanekeeping). As ever, any action you take manually will override this.
My grandfather died in a crash because he fell asleep (or fainted, we never found out definitively) at the wheel. Had this existed 50 years ago, I might have been able to meet him.
Yo dawg, I herd you like seat, so I put a seat inside your seat so you can be drowsy when you be driving.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Perhaps not creepy but, by itself, not foolproof. I have a tendency toward Bradycardia (slow heart-rate). My normal is in the 50's and at times will slow even down to the mid-40's while fully alert and functional. I don't know whether the system in mind incudes other input in order to determine impairment - the article doesn't really say - but heart-rate alone would be far from reliable. To be universally useful, I think that a "fatigue detector" needs more than just one parameter.
I don't want my car calling the police on me to "take further action."
Your choice? The ambulance or the hearse?
There will be other drivers and other systems monitoring your physical condition and behavior on the road.
The Triple Zero call --- 911 in the states --- will go out. The only questioning remaining is whether you will be responsive when help arrives.
Panic now! Sounds like the Zombie apocalypse is already in full swing!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Now I really can drive by the seat of my pants!
Can't get here soon enough. I hope that I'll live to see the day where humans would be forbidden to get behind a wheel on public roads.
Now if they can only design a seat for my computer at work...
And exactly how long would it take for the car insurance industry to demand access to the data to "ensure you get the lowest market rate"? That's how it works. First you get a low premium for incorporating the technology, and then when the market gets saturated to a certain level, they switch and you can no longer get a quote (or set so ridiculously high that the difference is debatable) without having the tech installed.
Anybody want to bet that when you rip out a real cheek-flapper, your seat's going to assume you're having a heart attack and call 911 or something?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I often avoid driving long distances because I have a hard time staying awake. It doesn't matter if I'm sleepy or not, after an hour or so behind the wheel, I start having a hard time. I drink lots of caffeine, eat spicy snacks, etc., and that usually manages to keep me alert, but sometimes even that isn't enough. I find pulling my arm hair or slapping my legs or face, hard, works pretty well to shock me back into alertness. If it gets really bad, I pull over and jog up and down the side of the road for a few minutes. All in all, I have a set of coping strategies that work reasonably well, and I haven't actually fallen asleep and wrecked in almost 25 years.
But it still worries me, every time I set out on a long road trip I can't avoid.
If this really can detect when I'm actually falling asleep, and safely, gently take over and steer the car to a stop, I'd love it. I'd still use my same stay-awake strategies, but having the automated backup would really reduce my anxiety (which anxiety, BTW, does not seem to contribute to keeping me awake).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
A wearable medical-alarm device that detects when I'm driving and when I'm dozing off (or legally drunk, or whatever) at the same time. Let it beep at me and let it do whatever per-programmed task I tell it to do if I don't respond.
This task may be to alert the car that the driver is impaired, so the car can take action (assuming the car is equipped to receive such a message). On the other hand, I may program it to call my doctor or the local police.
A device that can tell I'm driving can also tell my phone to send all calls to voicemail and defer notifying me of texts until I am no longer driving.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sitting at my desk...drowsy. Can this seat do my work for me? And also fail to read summaries and post comments on Slashdot? zzzzzzzzzzz
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I had the chance to test drive this. However I had had lunch earlier at Taco Bell, and the car seemed to think I was having heart attacks.
This would actually be a great boon to truckers - it would, if used properly, dramatically reduce the kind of accidents we saw with Tracy Morgan where an overtired trucker caused a horrific crash. The truckers would hate it though, but if it's use was mandatory - AND we had some regulation of shippers to prevent them from penalizing drivers who follow the rules it would be a net good thing. We can talk about passenger cars later - lets get the low hanging fruit in the safety world first...
what are you? a personal representative from the Mellon family?
this is a **false dichotomy**
you present two options as if those are the only two options...
> Risk crashing car
-OR-
> have health insurance companies know your health status
total logic error
those two things are not, in any way mutually exclusive...however, making them *seem* that way would surely benefit insurance companies
Thank you Dave Raggett
hey, Sockatume, if it's no big deal, lets have you be first.
just because ***YOU*** are willing to give up privacy b/c of insurance company's artificial scarcity con-job doesn't mean the rest of us want to do the same
you can forfeit your rights/privacy for no reason in a rigged system...
***you cannot make the same decision for everyone else***
Thank you Dave Raggett
When are they going invent a chip that you can shove up your ass so it can tweet you when you need to take a shit.
But I would love to have the peace of mind from an automated device to help me in my coping with this defect I have.
Yeah, but why wait on a system that only kicks in when it detects you're drowsy?!
There are already collision avoidance systems that are *always on*, and constantly monitoring the road, and ready to react and protect the car and you, unless you explicitely override them (you have to push on the accelerator stronger to force the car not to slow down. Might be useful for the 1% case where you know there's no risk but the collision avoidance system gets affraid of an obstacle and slows down).
Such equipment is standard with some manufacturer (Volvo) and this technology is going to get mandatory in a few years in EU.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
this guy can drive drowsy for thirty years.
And had no single accident in these 30 years. Still better than all the drunken / texting teens on the same road. Despite the sickness, he's overall safer than you're average driver.
But I see your point about the ridiculeness of the airport security theater.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The no. 1 reason for most road accidents is lack of attention . "eyes on the road and hands on the wheel"
But unless you're a robot, the're no guarantee that you'll be able to keep your eyes on the road *every last second* for all the *decades in total* you're driving.
Nobody's perfect, error do still happen (to err is human, etc.)
But technology can does already help (I'm not speaking about replacing the basic need of attention and allowing everybody to text. I'm speaking about augmenting the attention to compensate for imperfection). And the good news is you don't need robots (or waiting that Google's car hit retail).
Collision avoidance systems are already available today, are standard with some manufacturer and are going to become mandatory in a few years in europe.
The only thing I don't understand is why is there a need to subordinate them to a "drowsiness" detector?!
They already work well enough today, when they are basically "always on" (that's their whole point. Unlike a human they can be perfectly always watching everylast second over the decades of driving) always automatically kick in, and require active command from the driver to be overridden.
(You can slam the accelerator for that 1% corner cases when you know it's safe and that it's just the safety being over paranoid and you don't actually need to break). But in my personal experience the "requires active command" works well enough, no need for an actual "drowsiness detector" (well, unless you're sleep waling and kicking the gaz pedal in your dreams).
Though I see other much better use for an in-car health monitor.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Your car may directly help you not crash right then, but it also will be busy notifying the authorities and your insurance company that you are an unsafe driver....
Which in European countries will very likely be considered as a very bad violation of the privacy of your medical information.
Also, in that, scenario, it wouldn't even that much make sense: you're not an unsafe driver if you're driving a car which is clearly able to compensate for you problems.
The way the laws tend to work in europe is that any problem, if compensated enough, won't prevent you from driving.
- "You have a bad sight? Well, if you can see good enough with your glasses (as measured by an ophthalmologist), then you can still drive".
Seems clear and basic enough? In most European countries, the same reasoning is scaled up for any other problem.
You don't pay a more expensive car insurance just because you need glasses.
- Epileptic person? Yeah, so what. Having a seizure while driving would be dangerous. BUT if the medication works well enough (as asserted by a neurologist), and you have no seizures, then you can still driver.
In your hypothetical future: /.er, or have some attention deficit syndrome) and your car's collision avoidance system can compensate for it (say, as a random example, you have a Volvo - a European brand that puts collision avoidance systems as a standard option in all their cars already today), then why shouldn't you be allowed to drive? If repeated test have shown that such cars can break instead of you in case of emergency, why not?
- If you have problems staying focused on the road (having sleep apnea as mentioned above in the thread by a
Personally, I will feel safer about the fact that the car behind me* breaks and doesn't rear-end me*. That's the important part for me. I don't give a fuck about who pushed the break. The driver, a driver instructor with a dual command, or a robot. All the same for me. I only care that the car stops and avoids an accident.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If Volvo takes this idea and adds it to their already-lengthy safety feature list, Ed will need a new car. Cos it will assume a cadaver is trying to drive and not let him zoom around town...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Perhaps not creepy but, by itself, not foolproof. I have a tendency toward Bradycardia (slow heart-rate). My normal is in the 50's and at times will slow even down to the mid-40's while fully alert and functional. I don't know whether the system in mind incudes other input in order to determine impairment - the article doesn't really say - but heart-rate alone would be far from reliable.
To be universally useful, I think that a "fatigue detector" needs more than just one parameter.
Lane departure should be a good combination. Calibration for the driver would be helpful, too because you are right, heart rate varies significantly from person to person. Conditioned athletes often have resting heart rates below 50, even below 40. On the other hand, a couch potato may start wavering at 80.
The easiest person in the world to fool is yourself.