Automatic Control of Car during Cardiac Arrest (With Pre-Programmed Messaging)

Author

Abid Shariff

Abstract

The aim of the project is to develop a prototype for the Automatic Car Control during Cardiac arrest. The prototype consists of a Heart rate monitor, pre programmed message sending module and fuzzy logic controller for obstacle detection and safe parking of the car. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality. With an ageing population it will only increase over the next 10 to 15 years since cardiovascular diseases occur predominantly in the age group of 55 and over. We intend to develop a prototype for the portable remote monitoring system that monitors the heart while traveling in the car and notifies the person or external party in case of abnormalities. We ought to modify the existing heart monitoring solutions to suite car environment such that the output of the existing system and our system are same. We basically monitor the frequency of the heart beats in the MATLAB/SIMULINK and in case of any deviation, it triggers the messaging module and converts the control of car from manual mode to automatic mode and controls it using FLC (which can be implemented in a Microcontroller). The advantages of this modification is that the sensor system gives noise free measurements which can be used in other environments, reduction in artifacts, it provides a vast scope for future implementation, cost efficiency and the noninvasive as well as nonintrusive measurement is guaranteed. The project consists of five phases. The first phase is the sensor part. The sensor portion consists of a normal stethoscope diaphragm linked to a “noise cancellation” microphone sampled at 8000 samples per second can be used. The second phase is the interface between sensors and PC. This interface phase is done using a “WINSOUND0-AI” card which converts analog signal to digital signal. The third phase is the processing of the heart signal. This module has two important parts: 1) Noise Cancellation and 2) Control logic part.Adaptive filters track the dynamic nature of a system and allow elimination of the unwanted part of the signal. These filters minimize the difference between the output signal and the desired signal by altering the filtering coefficients. The control logic part converts the heart rate signal (PQRST wave/heart beat sounds) into square pulses. This conversion is done in SIMULINK,where the sensor signal is compared with a threshold to convert them into a square pulses. Then the square pulses are counted using counter and if the count exceeds 120 beats/sec or reduces below 60 beats/sec an alarm is triggered. Then in fourth phase is message sending module. In this portion we send an emergency message to the doctor (relatives) using AT commands. Then control of the car shifts to automatic mode. The final phase is fuzzy driving of the car.