A Study on the Usage of Blood-Volume-Pressure as a Driver’s Mental Workload Evaluation Tool
Ahmad Khushairy Bin MAKHTAR1 and Makoto ITOH2

1 Department of Risk Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam, Malaysia

2 Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Page 1 – 8   |   Vol. 2, No. 1 (2017)   |    Available online on 1 April 2017

Abstract

Estimating a driver’s mental workload level is challenging part nowadays. In this study, an experimental investigation was conducted to explore mental workload using blood-volume-pressure (BVP) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. Participants performed two secondary tasks at two levels of task difficulty and also in two types of traffic conditions. The results show that increasing task difficulty seems to increase heart rate (HR) and reduce the heart rate variability (HRV) data simultaneously. Especially, data for HR was high when the drivers were performing the most difficult task for the mathematical arithmetic task. Results from BVP and ECG also show that they correlate each other showing that BVP can be used as a potential candidate as a mental workload measurement tools. Potential applications of this research include developing a method to estimate a driver`s mental workload level through blood volume pressure as the main measurement for evaluation of mental workload as it is non-intrusive to drivers.

Keywords

Driver, Mental Workload, Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, Blood Volume Pressure

Acknowledgement

© 2022 Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFEM). All rights reserved.

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Human Factors & Ergonomics Journal (HFEJ), eISSN: 2590-3705  is the official Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Malaysia.  The journal is published on a biannual basis. HFEJ aims to address current research in the field of Ergonomics in addition to the broad coverage of cognitive ergonomics, user experience, physical ergonomics and others such as transportation, industrial design and industrial engineering. HFEJ is a member of, and subscribes to the principles of the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), as such we only accept original work.