Smart Vital Signs and Accident Monitoring System for Motorcyclists Embedded in Helmets and Garments for Advanced eCall Emergency Assistance and Health Analysis Monitoring ☆

The EU funded project i-VITAL investigates an advanced eCall system for motorcycles. Within the consortium three participating SME companies, NZI (helmet manufacturer), Lookwell (garment manufacturer) and CAP (polymer manufacturer) are working together with three research institutes (CETEM, Fraunhofer and TECOS) on a novel vital sign monitoring and accident detection system to be seamlessly integrated into helmets and garments. The project develops and tests sensors to measure vital data of riders in order to enhance the eCall by relevant rider's data. Next to the eCall functionality, i-VITAL also aims at a continuous analysis of real-time vital data to warn the rider in order to prevent possible accidents or health hazards due to fatigue, sleepiness and inattentiveness respectively. To ensure reliability of the sensor system i-VITAL will develop and integrate energy harvesting capabilities into helmets and garments in order to maximize the duty time of the system. The paper presents the i-VITAL approach for eCall enhancement and vital data acquisition and the first project results. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.