Ride comfort control system using driver’s psychological state: Experimental consideration on heart rate variability

Abstract

Bioinstrumentation has been used in the automotive industry to evaluate the ride comfort level of different vehicles. However, there have been no studies attempting to incorporate bioinstrumentation in the controls. In this paper, we propose a ride comfort control system using the psychological state of the driver as estimated through bioinstrumentation. To evaluate the psychological state of the driver, we use the driver’s heart rate variability, which allows us to calculate the R-R interval and the LF/HF, the values of which reflect the activities of the autonomic nervous system. In this paper, we investigated the usefulness of a ride comfort control system using adequate bioinstrumentation and switching criterions for the system. As the results indicate, the drivers become relaxed when using the ride comfort control system as based on their psychological state. Moreover, the drivers become more relaxed when using LF/HF as the switching criterion for ride comfort.