Monitoring Driver Posture Through Sensorized Seat

Future intelligent vehicles will be capable to monitor driver distraction while autonomous driving. However, in case of system fault, the intelligent vehicle must also manage an adaptive strategy for the Airbag Control Unit, since the airbag deployment against an Out of Position occupant can be additionally harmful. Thus, the present research work investigates a possibility to monitor the driver position as a robust information to an intelligent vehicle. A seat is sensorized with a map of pressure sensors. The system layout and setup are discussed in details. Signal processing strategy and real driving experiments are reported.