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Acquiring drivers’ physiological parameters is helpful for driver assistance systems to reliably estimate drivers’ comprehensive mental states, but traditional methods of measurements have to intrusively attach sensors or fasten electrodes to the body. Intrusive methods of measurement are acceptable in experimental settings but unacceptable as routine operation in daily driving. In this paper, the Smart Wheel System is introduced. The Smart Wheel System is a prototype system that collects the following cognition/emotion physiological signals: blood volume pulse, skin conductance, skin temperature, and respiration wave. It uses embedded sensors and electrodes in steering wheel and seat belt with near-zero interference. Due to the fact that hand and body movements cause temporary gap in the real-time data stream, gripping force and gripping position are collected as indicative data to compensate breaks in the physiological data stream.

While testing vehicles for crash, particularly the offset frontal crash mode, new devices and techniques are needed to enhance the ability to measure rotations of certain vehicle components and dummy parts (or joints). The reason for this new demand is that the capabilities of existing techniques or devices in measuring rotations of small masses in confined areas are limited. Examples of the desired measurements are the rotations of dummy's feet and tibias as well as the rotations of the vehicle's toe-board during intrusion. These measurements help to understand dummy's ankle loads as a result of different intrusion rates. Furthermore, having these measurements is very beneficial to the validation of the computer models used in simulating the behavior of dummy's lower extremities in high intrusion crashes. Recent research demonstrated the use of an angular rate sensor, based on magnetohydrodynamic principles, on Hybrid-III dummies and cadavers.

In this paper a closed-loop 4WS controller is proposed, which employs feedback control for both front and rear wheels. With an extra closed-loop steering control in series with the manual steering control for the front wheel, it is possible to achieve an enhanced vehicle transient handling response while eliminate the heavily oversteering tendency of the past 4WS system to achieve a driving handling feeling similar to a normal FWS vehicle. Comparisons have been made among the FWS, 4WS with zero side slip and this closed-loop 4WS system.