A Non-Intrusive Detection of Somnolence Through Physiological Parameters

Apparatus and method for the early detection of somnolence of a person, particularly of a person gripping an object such as a steering wheel. A wrist band is worn by the person and sensors are pressed against the person's skin by band to sense various physiological parameters of the user, including peripheral pulse rate variability, peripheral vasodilation. If the majority of these parameters are indicative of increased somnolence, an audio alert is provided to the user. The main aim of this work is to provide an improved non-intrusive method for the physiological monitoring and alerting for events indicating increasing somnolence. A major advantage of this work is the absence of head-mounted electrodes and sensors. The monitoring from the limbs is a major advantage because the device is self-contained, having no wires to tangle with. The parameters monitored are analog signals in nature. They are amplified, filtered, and converted into a digital format for further processing by microcontroller or embedded unit. For each parameter an individualized baseline is computed and stored in memory. When the physiological value deviates from a preset baseline value an alert alarm is raised.