We present an integrated sensor system for continuous monitoring of motorcyclists, which aims to benefit from the growing acceptance for wearable electronics, but goes beyond the most common life-style applications by trying to improve the user's safety. Our system features a textile front end (garment, e.g. shirt) with integrated ECG electrodes and respiration sensor as well as electronics for data acquisition, signal conditioning and onboard processing. ECG and respiration signals are processed not only to give the user feedback on his health status, but are further analyzed to detect fatigue and trigger a driver warning and thus avoid critical situations. In addition inertial sensors are used to detect accidents and trigger an emergency call, compliant to the eCall standard, if necessary. In case of an accidents health data can be online provided to first responders, before they reach the accident site. This paper includes a short description of the overall system, discusses methods to adapt the vital sign monitoring to our application and evaluates signal quality with of the acquired ECG signal. Our results indicate, that our system allows reliable heart rate measurements even on long motorbike rides
In order to improve the emergency response of medical services to motorcycle accidents, the EU-funded i-VITAL project has developed an integrated system for providing real-time vital sign readings to emergency teams so that an adequate emergency response can be prepared in advance. The use of helmets is compulsory and they already include other enhanced functionalities (such as Bluetooth hands-free headset, or even GPS support). However, ECG has been performed almost solely through skin contact to both sides of the body, whereas direct electrical heart signal monitoring (ECG-like) in helmets remains an unsolved problem. This paper presents the work and results on ECG-like measurements in the head area using EPIC sensors. This work was part of the i-VITAL project research, with the goal of constructing a novel vital sign monitoring system for seamless integration into helmets
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