HR changes in driving scenes with danger and difficulties using driving simulator

Abstract

To provide a safe and comfortable driving environment, extracting a variety of stress scenes experienced by drivers and utilizing them for investigating actual causes and ways to assist drivers is effective. To find scenes that could be investigated efficiently in this way, we proposed a method based on changes in a driver's physiological indices that emotional changes may have caused. In this paper, we examined the possibility of applying this method to experimental situations using a driving simulator (DS). An experiment using a DS has an advantage over one done in a real life situation in that the experimental parameters can be controlled. This paper examines the relationship between a driver's emotional changes and physiological changes during driving. As a result, we suggest that whether an event is recognized and how much emotion it caused can be estimated by combining measurements of changes in heart rate (HR), skin conductance (SC), and respiration. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.