Study and analysis of the use of a multi-sensors prototype steering wheel in a virtual environment based on a dynamic driving simulator

The advancement of technology has drastically changed the way of interaction between human and vehicles. Considering the steering wheel, until now, cars vendors have started to include more buttons on it to control many functions, such as phone answering, infotainment and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) management and so on. An innovative concept of a multi-sensors steering wheel has been developed in recent years. It includes sensors that can acquire driver physiological data, obtained through various parameters such as electrodermal activity, heart rate variability and so on. The multi-sensor steering wheel could improve the overall driving experience, e.g. helping to integrate functions in the ADAS to prevent accidents by alerting the driver to potential hazards, detecting the driver's physical condition, improving the comfort of the driver and so on and so forth. In this activity, carried out in collaboration with a Stellantis company (CRF), a multi-sensor steering wheel Proof of Concept (PoC) is used. This PoC is capable of acquiring some driver's physiological parameters. The multi-sensors steering wheel PoC was provided thanks to the support and availability of a Tier 1. The multi-sensors steering wheel PoC has some sensors on the rim, that are capable to acquire electrocardiogram and electrodermal activity signals. The heart rate signal is acquired using the multi-sensors steering wheel PoC and some electronic consumer devices. The scope of using also commercial devices is to guarantee the continuity of the information, also when the hands are not properly positioned on the sensors or due to movement artifacts. The aim of the activity is to have an initial objective feedback on the possibility of being able to adopt similar devices in the future vehicles. To achieve this, the multi-sensors steering wheel has been mounted on the cockpit of a dynamic driving simulator, capable of creating an immersive virtual driving environment as close to reality as possible. The choice of the type of scenarios is one of the key points for achieving the objective of the activity. After a literature review and consulting internal company physiologists and experts, the choice fell on two types, the highway one and the city center one. The reason for this choice is to elicit different physiological driver's response, also introducing disturbing elements within the scenarios. The methodology also includes the recruitment of participants for the driving simulation. The 15 participants who took part in the simulation are people inside the company and the recruitment has been done in compliance with GDPR requirements. They were selected using a questionnaire useful for a preliminary screening of those who were eligible to participate in the test, due to the problem of motion sickness that can be experienced in dynamic driving simulators. From the results, the average percentage of hands detected on the sensors is greater than 94% for both hands. The average percentage of heart rate signal, labelled as usable by the multi-sensors steering wheel PoC, is approximately 90% in both scenarios. Furthermore, the results show how the highway scenario with the inclusion of disturbance events can create significant variations in the physiological data with respect to the city center scenario. As future work, the aspects related to the physiological signals and the driver's stress level can be explored, acquiring the data using a multi-sensors steering wheel mounted on a real vehicle.