Ford Designs Sensors For Vehicles That Will Check Driver's Heart Rate

Ford takes tech innovation seriously for its cars and trucks. The company has put a huge amount of research and money into green technology and fuel efficiency for its vehicles. That isn't the only place that Ford is looking to innovate though. Ford has announced an interesting new technology that may someday allows the seats in a Ford vehicle to alert a driver's physician if there is a problem with the driver's heart.

The engineers from the Ford European Research and Innovation Centre in Aachen, Germany and Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University have worked together to expand the possible in-car health tech and wellness solutions to helping people with chronic illnesses or medical disorders manage their condition on the go. This sort of tech might also one day help authorities determine if a medical problem was a contributing factor to an accident.

The new tech puts sensors into the seat of a Ford vehicle and that data can be collected by onboard software and sent to remote medical services. The sensors could be used to do things like call 911 in the event of a heart attack behind the wheel too. The system uses six sensors that are specially designed to read the heart rate through clothing. Most sensors need direct contact with the skin to read heart rate. The accuracy is said to be up to 98% and the sensors can read through ten layers of cotton, but has some issues with some synthetic fabrics and labs wool.