Designing non contact based ECG system for driver drowsiness detection

Abstract

Driver drowsiness has been a significant hazard resulting in various traffic accidents, severe injuries, or even fatalities. Therefore, monitoring this condition is crucial not only in alerting drivers but also in avoiding fatal accidents. Therefore, this paper proposes a hardware design for drowsiness detection; in addition, the outputs used to justify this paper were simulated in the LT Spice. Through a thorough observation, it is apparent that a driver's drowsiness is associated with an immediate change in his heart rate, and due to the fact that Electrocardiogram (ECG) is used to detect an accurate heart rate, we used it as a parameter in the proposed design where it consists of a non contact ECG sensor as an input source and a circuit with a two-stage amplifier to improve the ECG signal's strength and filters to minimize noise. An approximate maximum peak ECG output voltage of 2.8V was obtained in LT Spice, and the resulting ECG output is sufficient enough to detect a driver's drowsiness while preventing major accidents.