Physiological and psychological evaluation by skin potential activity measurement using steering wheel while driving

Abstract

This paper proposes a new method for practical skin potential activity (SPA) measurement while driving a car by installing electrodes on the outer periphery of the steering wheel. Evaluating the psychophysiological state of the driver while driving is important for accident prevention. We investigated whether the physiological and psychological state of the driver can be evaluated by measuring SPA while driving. Therefore, we have devised a way to measure SPA measurement by installing electrodes in a handle. Electrodes are made of tin foil and are placed along the outer periphery of the wheel considering that their position while driving is not fixed. The potential difference is increased by changing the impedance through changing the width of electrodes. Moreover we try to experiment using this environment. An experiment to investigate the possibility of measuring SPA using the conventional and the proposed methods were conducted with five healthy adult males. A physical stimulus was applied to the forearm of the subjects. It was found that the proposed method could measure SPA, even though the result was slightly smaller than that of the conventional method of affixing electrodes directly on hands.