6 ms·

FIA to Introduce Biometric Monitoring Gloves

43 points by chrisan 9y ago

jstanley 9y ago
Lets just hope this is one piece of Formula 1 technology that doesn't trickle down into road cars.
- melling 9y ago
  You can wear them anywhere. If an simple Apple Watch can be used to save a life, this technology might save a lot more. https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/15/apple-watch-saves-life-managing-heart-attack/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/15/apple-watch-saves-life-managi... Probably wouldn’t wear them all the time but when someone doesn’t “feel well”, a wearable in some form might save a life.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    As long as it's optional, it's fine. But shortly after it becomes optional, it will probably become mandatory (if previous safety technology is anything to judge by), and then you've got the government having access to live biometric monitoring data of every single driver on the road.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
sandworm101 9y ago
What use is this data? How does knowing the drivers o2 saturation after a crash change any procedure? It isn't as if they are ever going to leave him in a wreck for a second longer than needed. He is comming out asap and his 02 measured immediately no matter. Will they pull a driver from a race should his o2 appear to drop? I doubt it.
- JshWright 9y ago
  Knowing the patient is critically injured would likely increase the acceptable level of risk to the rescue personnel responsible for the extrication. It might also change how the incident is handled on track. Generally F1 prioritizes keeping the race going (deploying a safety car only if absolutely necessary). Knowing a driver is critically injured would likely trigger a "red flag" stop to the race, allowing rescue personnel unrestricted access to the track.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Really? They are going to move slower on a trapped driver because his o2 sensor says he is still breathing? No. They are going to move at 100% towards any and every trapped driver. And once out of the car his gloves will be stripped and a standard sensor applied, one that can be read directly.
    - JshWright 9y ago
      F1 cars are dangerous things. F1 tracks even moreso (when the race it still taking place). They are going to move very slowly and deliberately, checking and double checking all the safety features of the car. They are going to be very careful moving the driver, to avoid potentially exacerbating an injury. If, on the other hand, they know the driver is dead in a couple minutes without intervention, some of those steps are going to get skipped (that's what I meant by the "acceptable level of risk" changing). For what it's worth, I'm a firefighter/paramedic, and have cut many people out of (ordinary) cars over the past decade or so.
    - vvillena 9y ago
      No, that's not how they work. Emergency personnel can get the driver out extremely quickly if need be, but if there's no immediate risk they will work slowly to avoid further injury.
    - alistairSH 9y ago
      They are going to move at 100% towards any and every trapped driver. Nope. Not true. Track personnel are trained to be cautious. They shouldn't be on a live track unless absolutely necessary. Anything that increases their ability to discern "absolutely necessary" from "not necessary" is a good thing. [Former amateur race car driver]
- blauditore 9y ago
  > It isn't as if they are ever going to leave him in a wreck for a second longer than needed. Actually, the goal is generally not to pull a driver out of a wreck as fast as possible. For example, if the driver has some broken bones (especially spinal ones), rescuers might want to act carefully to avoid any further damage if the circumstances allow that. But if the wreck is catching fire or the driver is in danger of suffocating (as potentially detectable with those gloves), they'll have to act faster and "trade" potential additional injury for saving the driver's life.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    And they need/will trust the gloves to tell them if the wreck is or isnt on fire? Fire and/or danger of suffocation happens long before anything these gloves could detect. I know that this data is medically interesting but cannot see how it could impact actual procedure trackside. Someone will be at the scene asap regardless of data. They will check for fire and breathing issues. If either driver isnt talking or car on fire, driver is comming out now. After out, or sometimes before, gloves are off and other sensors applied. Decisions such as the use of a spinal turn on danger, not medical data: always a spinal unless car about to explode. I dont see the case for this data as it only means something long after more apparant dangers have already dictated decisions. (In my work i regularly draft ERPs for aviation crashes, a similar senario. I just last month completed a hypoxia course in a hypobaric chamber where o2 sat was a very big deal)
    - avdmerwe 9y ago
      This will indeed not slow down anyone's initial response, but it will hopefully give us an insight into what happened before anyone gets there, or while the rescue evolves. We would have really liked to know what happened while we were underway to the scene in this scenario: https://youtu.be/QOM5SzxEFGU?t=1m50s https://youtu.be/QOM5SzxEFGU?t=1m50s And a driver under a few 100kg of Tecpro barriers takes a while to get to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJN-b-ovkQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJN-b-ovkQQ
      - 9y ago
- avdmerwe 9y ago
  This is meant to serve as an extra data point during the decision-making process when we first get to a driver, especially when we don't have immediate access to them. As other posters have pointed out, we try to minimise additional risk to the driver and rescue workers as much as possible. Pulling a car out of the barriers quickly could potentially injure a driver that was perfectly fine. The data will also be useful in post-analysis, as much of the time it can take up to 2 minutes for us to reach a driver at some circuits. If we can see that a driver wasn't moving and had low blood sats, that could be useful info when deciding on further treatment/imaging/etc. I drive the F1 Medical Car, and came up with this system together with my colleague Dr. Ian Roberts, and have spent the past 2 years developing it. Any questions, ask!
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    I never seem to be able to think of intelligent questions when I suddenly have a rare opportunity to ask someone cool - so may I just say it's really awesome to see you commenting about this on HN?
    - avdmerwe 9y ago
      Personally, I think it's really cool that anyone would post this on HN or even have questions about it!
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Then your guys must be operating in a much lower energy environment than mine. In an aviation crash my driver (air crew) will be inside a mess of aluminum, high voltage wires, fuel and burning carbon fiber. Extraction is the first priority. Unless the pilot is talking and can give a great reason to stay, he is comming out. It isnt so much for his safety but for the five or more rescuers who dont want to be caught in the inevitable fireball. Our SAR guys are backing away from even checking vitals in situ, let alone o2 sat. In the extreme, ejection seat aircraft often have instructions for activating the canopy/seat on the ground, if necessary to "extract" a pilot. A twice-broken back is better than burned to death.
JshWright 9y ago
"This is potentially important in the context of a racing driver because if they have an injury that is affecting breathing, the oxygen content of the blood will begin diminishing immediately." That depends on your definition of "immediately"... It can take several minutes of apnea before the oxygen saturation level starts to drop off. This is particularly true of people in good cardiovascular condition (which F1 drivers certainly are).
- avdmerwe 9y ago
  Reading some of the press that this has had, it's unfortunate that some things have had a bit too much PR treatment. I'd also tend to disagree with 'immediately'. We definitely don't expect this to be a silver bullet - it is the first (long overdue) foray into permanent physiological monitoring in F1, which will serve as a blueprint for further sensors and monitoring. We chose SpO2 and motion as the first metrics, as they potentially offer us a lot of value with a single monitoring site.
  - HorizonXP 9y ago
    Alan? Welcome to HN! Can you talk a bit more about how you guys developed this? It sounds like the biometrics sensor you developed was custom-built. When did development start? What kind of support did you get from the FIA, F1, and race teams? How did you guys do your beta testing? I feel like an AMA is in order, and Hacker News is probably the best place to do it. I think a lot of us would also love to hear about your stories being the F1 medical car driver too. Edit: another question. - Why Bluetooth? Even with 500m range, you'd likely need several receivers around the track to ensure coverage. Furthermore, how reliable is it among the various sources of RF interference around the track? I'd like to hear more about this, because we've done some development with low-power long-range wireless devices, and Bluetooth was never considered a possibility. Maybe your constraints are different, or you guys know something I don't.
    - avdmerwe 9y ago
      Thanks! Strange to be posting, as I've been reading HN for years. As with most things, this turned out to be more complex than we initially thought. The regulations in F1 meant that there were no off-the-shelf options for sensors. That, together with the fact that we needed to make things at low volumes, and potentially custom for drivers, meant that we had to develop the sensor ourselves. Fire rating and interaction with other safety systems on the car dictated a lot of our design choices. The FIA has been instrumental in making this happen, as they are constantly trying to improve safety. Testing something like this at F1 races was challenging, as teams have less and less time to get their car development done. Everyone has been very supportive of the idea though, as teams always want more data! Most drivers have done a decent amount of track time last year with various versions of the sensors, and we've chosen a design which ticks the most boxes. It is still very early days however, and I'm sure we'll have improved in almost all areas (comfort, performance & integration into clothing) by the end of the year. The device we've developed can be used on many sites on the body, but for now the glove presents the 'easiest' to implement across the various clothing manufacturers. Further down the line, we'll probably fit more things in the earpieces, but this will require more than just anecdotal evidence as to what happens with the earpieces during large impacts. We want this data to be available in the most extreme cases. So although the ear would be a great place for SpO2 99% of the time when all is well, we don't know enough about how the sensor would interact with the sacrificial systems (helmet, head rest) in the accidents we'd most want this to work. Bluetooth: I personally feel that the BLE standard is heading in the right direction for our use case, looking at the 5.0 standard and onwards. Lots of the current limitations will be solved by wider industry, instead of us having to do the legwork. Each car will have an on-car receiver which drops the data onto existing telemetry systems. In many cases, these systems are no longer functional after large accidents (antenna gets knocked off, car powered off etc), so we'd like to access the data with consumer devices in the worst cases. We already have iPads mounted in the car for other data, so BLE is the best candidate for now. RF interference is actually also a reason we chose BLE: the 2.4GHz band is relatively quiet at race tracks, as most systems are in the higher bands these days. I'd happily do an AMA, not sure how best to go about it though.
whistlerbrk 9y ago
Yes the gloves are interesting, and I'm sorry if this is off topic, but that steering wheel is incredible. If you search for images of F1 steering wheels it looks like they are all custom within some parameters.
- jstanley 9y ago
  If you search for images of any F1 parts, they're almost all custom within some parameters.
- wmeredith 9y ago
  The steering wheels are custom for each driver's style and biometrics, as with almost all other pieces touching them. He's a cool write up on how they're developed: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/ https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/
jkldsadfaf 9y ago
"The sensor uses a new industrial version of Bluetooth " I hope its more robust than my BOSS headphones (beep beep connected to Deb- BEEP BEEP lost conection to Debian)

43 points by chrisan 9y ago

jstanley 9y ago

Lets just hope this is one piece of Formula 1 technology that doesn't trickle down into road cars.

melling 9y ago
You can wear them anywhere. If an simple Apple Watch can be used to save a life, this technology might save a lot more. https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/15/apple-watch-saves-life-managing-heart-attack/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/15/apple-watch-saves-life-managi... Probably wouldn’t wear them all the time but when someone doesn’t “feel well”, a wearable in some form might save a life.
- jstanley 9y ago
  As long as it's optional, it's fine. But shortly after it becomes optional, it will probably become mandatory (if previous safety technology is anything to judge by), and then you've got the government having access to live biometric monitoring data of every single driver on the road.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

sandworm101 9y ago

What use is this data? How does knowing the drivers o2 saturation after a crash change any procedure? It isn't as if they are ever going to leave him in a wreck for a second longer than needed. He is comming out asap and his 02 measured immediately no matter. Will they pull a driver from a race should his o2 appear to drop? I doubt it.

JshWright 9y ago
Knowing the patient is critically injured would likely increase the acceptable level of risk to the rescue personnel responsible for the extrication. It might also change how the incident is handled on track. Generally F1 prioritizes keeping the race going (deploying a safety car only if absolutely necessary). Knowing a driver is critically injured would likely trigger a "red flag" stop to the race, allowing rescue personnel unrestricted access to the track.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  Really? They are going to move slower on a trapped driver because his o2 sensor says he is still breathing? No. They are going to move at 100% towards any and every trapped driver. And once out of the car his gloves will be stripped and a standard sensor applied, one that can be read directly.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    F1 cars are dangerous things. F1 tracks even moreso (when the race it still taking place). They are going to move very slowly and deliberately, checking and double checking all the safety features of the car. They are going to be very careful moving the driver, to avoid potentially exacerbating an injury. If, on the other hand, they know the driver is dead in a couple minutes without intervention, some of those steps are going to get skipped (that's what I meant by the "acceptable level of risk" changing). For what it's worth, I'm a firefighter/paramedic, and have cut many people out of (ordinary) cars over the past decade or so.
  - vvillena 9y ago
    No, that's not how they work. Emergency personnel can get the driver out extremely quickly if need be, but if there's no immediate risk they will work slowly to avoid further injury.
  - alistairSH 9y ago
    They are going to move at 100% towards any and every trapped driver. Nope. Not true. Track personnel are trained to be cautious. They shouldn't be on a live track unless absolutely necessary. Anything that increases their ability to discern "absolutely necessary" from "not necessary" is a good thing. [Former amateur race car driver]
blauditore 9y ago
> It isn't as if they are ever going to leave him in a wreck for a second longer than needed. Actually, the goal is generally not to pull a driver out of a wreck as fast as possible. For example, if the driver has some broken bones (especially spinal ones), rescuers might want to act carefully to avoid any further damage if the circumstances allow that. But if the wreck is catching fire or the driver is in danger of suffocating (as potentially detectable with those gloves), they'll have to act faster and "trade" potential additional injury for saving the driver's life.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  And they need/will trust the gloves to tell them if the wreck is or isnt on fire? Fire and/or danger of suffocation happens long before anything these gloves could detect. I know that this data is medically interesting but cannot see how it could impact actual procedure trackside. Someone will be at the scene asap regardless of data. They will check for fire and breathing issues. If either driver isnt talking or car on fire, driver is comming out now. After out, or sometimes before, gloves are off and other sensors applied. Decisions such as the use of a spinal turn on danger, not medical data: always a spinal unless car about to explode. I dont see the case for this data as it only means something long after more apparant dangers have already dictated decisions. (In my work i regularly draft ERPs for aviation crashes, a similar senario. I just last month completed a hypoxia course in a hypobaric chamber where o2 sat was a very big deal)
  - avdmerwe 9y ago
    This will indeed not slow down anyone's initial response, but it will hopefully give us an insight into what happened before anyone gets there, or while the rescue evolves. We would have really liked to know what happened while we were underway to the scene in this scenario: https://youtu.be/QOM5SzxEFGU?t=1m50s https://youtu.be/QOM5SzxEFGU?t=1m50s And a driver under a few 100kg of Tecpro barriers takes a while to get to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJN-b-ovkQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJN-b-ovkQQ
    - 9y ago
avdmerwe 9y ago
This is meant to serve as an extra data point during the decision-making process when we first get to a driver, especially when we don't have immediate access to them. As other posters have pointed out, we try to minimise additional risk to the driver and rescue workers as much as possible. Pulling a car out of the barriers quickly could potentially injure a driver that was perfectly fine. The data will also be useful in post-analysis, as much of the time it can take up to 2 minutes for us to reach a driver at some circuits. If we can see that a driver wasn't moving and had low blood sats, that could be useful info when deciding on further treatment/imaging/etc. I drive the F1 Medical Car, and came up with this system together with my colleague Dr. Ian Roberts, and have spent the past 2 years developing it. Any questions, ask!
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  I never seem to be able to think of intelligent questions when I suddenly have a rare opportunity to ask someone cool - so may I just say it's really awesome to see you commenting about this on HN?
  - avdmerwe 9y ago
    Personally, I think it's really cool that anyone would post this on HN or even have questions about it!
- sandworm101 9y ago
  Then your guys must be operating in a much lower energy environment than mine. In an aviation crash my driver (air crew) will be inside a mess of aluminum, high voltage wires, fuel and burning carbon fiber. Extraction is the first priority. Unless the pilot is talking and can give a great reason to stay, he is comming out. It isnt so much for his safety but for the five or more rescuers who dont want to be caught in the inevitable fireball. Our SAR guys are backing away from even checking vitals in situ, let alone o2 sat. In the extreme, ejection seat aircraft often have instructions for activating the canopy/seat on the ground, if necessary to "extract" a pilot. A twice-broken back is better than burned to death.

JshWright 9y ago

"This is potentially important in the context of a racing driver because if they have an injury that is affecting breathing, the oxygen content of the blood will begin diminishing immediately." That depends on your definition of "immediately"... It can take several minutes of apnea before the oxygen saturation level starts to drop off. This is particularly true of people in good cardiovascular condition (which F1 drivers certainly are).

avdmerwe 9y ago
Reading some of the press that this has had, it's unfortunate that some things have had a bit too much PR treatment. I'd also tend to disagree with 'immediately'. We definitely don't expect this to be a silver bullet - it is the first (long overdue) foray into permanent physiological monitoring in F1, which will serve as a blueprint for further sensors and monitoring. We chose SpO2 and motion as the first metrics, as they potentially offer us a lot of value with a single monitoring site.
- HorizonXP 9y ago
  Alan? Welcome to HN! Can you talk a bit more about how you guys developed this? It sounds like the biometrics sensor you developed was custom-built. When did development start? What kind of support did you get from the FIA, F1, and race teams? How did you guys do your beta testing? I feel like an AMA is in order, and Hacker News is probably the best place to do it. I think a lot of us would also love to hear about your stories being the F1 medical car driver too. Edit: another question. - Why Bluetooth? Even with 500m range, you'd likely need several receivers around the track to ensure coverage. Furthermore, how reliable is it among the various sources of RF interference around the track? I'd like to hear more about this, because we've done some development with low-power long-range wireless devices, and Bluetooth was never considered a possibility. Maybe your constraints are different, or you guys know something I don't.
  - avdmerwe 9y ago
    Thanks! Strange to be posting, as I've been reading HN for years. As with most things, this turned out to be more complex than we initially thought. The regulations in F1 meant that there were no off-the-shelf options for sensors. That, together with the fact that we needed to make things at low volumes, and potentially custom for drivers, meant that we had to develop the sensor ourselves. Fire rating and interaction with other safety systems on the car dictated a lot of our design choices. The FIA has been instrumental in making this happen, as they are constantly trying to improve safety. Testing something like this at F1 races was challenging, as teams have less and less time to get their car development done. Everyone has been very supportive of the idea though, as teams always want more data! Most drivers have done a decent amount of track time last year with various versions of the sensors, and we've chosen a design which ticks the most boxes. It is still very early days however, and I'm sure we'll have improved in almost all areas (comfort, performance & integration into clothing) by the end of the year. The device we've developed can be used on many sites on the body, but for now the glove presents the 'easiest' to implement across the various clothing manufacturers. Further down the line, we'll probably fit more things in the earpieces, but this will require more than just anecdotal evidence as to what happens with the earpieces during large impacts. We want this data to be available in the most extreme cases. So although the ear would be a great place for SpO2 99% of the time when all is well, we don't know enough about how the sensor would interact with the sacrificial systems (helmet, head rest) in the accidents we'd most want this to work. Bluetooth: I personally feel that the BLE standard is heading in the right direction for our use case, looking at the 5.0 standard and onwards. Lots of the current limitations will be solved by wider industry, instead of us having to do the legwork. Each car will have an on-car receiver which drops the data onto existing telemetry systems. In many cases, these systems are no longer functional after large accidents (antenna gets knocked off, car powered off etc), so we'd like to access the data with consumer devices in the worst cases. We already have iPads mounted in the car for other data, so BLE is the best candidate for now. RF interference is actually also a reason we chose BLE: the 2.4GHz band is relatively quiet at race tracks, as most systems are in the higher bands these days. I'd happily do an AMA, not sure how best to go about it though.

whistlerbrk 9y ago

Yes the gloves are interesting, and I'm sorry if this is off topic, but that steering wheel is incredible. If you search for images of F1 steering wheels it looks like they are all custom within some parameters.

jstanley 9y ago
If you search for images of any F1 parts, they're almost all custom within some parameters.
wmeredith 9y ago
The steering wheels are custom for each driver's style and biometrics, as with almost all other pieces touching them. He's a cool write up on how they're developed: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/ https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/

jkldsadfaf 9y ago

"The sensor uses a new industrial version of Bluetooth " I hope its more robust than my BOSS headphones (beep beep connected to Deb- BEEP BEEP lost conection to Debian)