Here’s another thing we could put into our new, future smart cars: seats integrated with sensors that can tell from your heart rate if you’re too tired to drive a car. Technology like that would help us avoid car accidents and other incidents on the road, which is why a team from the UK is looking into it.
The seats are a project by the UK’s Nottingham Trent University, who wants to develop an electrocardiogram (ECG) they can embed into a driver’s seat, one that will be able to monitor the driver’s heart rate. From this, the car would determine if that driver is too tired to actually drive the car, something that would definitely improve safety conditions.
The seats will reportedly use a technology called “Electric Potential Integrated Circuits,” or EPIC, which can measure heart rate, respiration, and other health factors in order to determine the driver’s level of alertness. The EPIC circuits were developed by company Plessey Semiconductors, and do not have to touch the human body in order to monitor it. The Nottingham Trent researchers want the EPIC circuits integrated into the seat itself.
If these car seats actually become a reality, the EPIC technology could eventually link with other functions in the car, like cruise control. Future versions of the seats could even take over the car, if the driver is apparently ignoring their warnings.
While such technology would without a doubt increase safety on the road, the seats are still in the beginning phases. The Nottingham Trent team still needs to find a conductive textile that would allow the EPIC circuits to be woven into the seats, among other challenges.
Source Discovery
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