FIA to Introduce Biometric Monitoring Gloves
fia.com
fia.com
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).
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.
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.
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.
BTW, I really enjoyed the Medical Car feature on formula1.com last year. I moonlight as a paramedic, and as part of that I'm often an ambulance driving instructor. Your quote about having some "capacity in reserve" is something I incorporate in my teaching now.
Great to hear that there's been some value in something I've said in an interview!
I agree with HorizonXP that it would be fascinating to learn more about this system (and F1 safety in general) from someone with a lot of first hand knowledge. Thanks for stopping by and adding to the discussion!
He's a cool write up on how they're developed: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/
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.
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.
I hope its more robust than my BOSS headphones (beep beep connected to Deb- BEEP BEEP lost conection to Debian)
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.
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.
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]
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.
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)
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
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
It wasn't until 2014 when Jules Bianchi crashed in Suzuka that F1 saw another death during a race. Now, a biometric sensor probably would not have helped Jules, but it may have alerted the medical team to the seriousness of his injuries. Oximetry and heart rate may not have indicated much, but I think it's a great first step towards other sensors that could eventually be incorporated.
F1 tries to be at the forefront of automotive technologies. Driver safety always has been and should be a huge part of that.
But we can all agree no one like the halo... (I kid...)
The Hans device, protective monocoque, wheel tethers and other incremental improvements are nothing short of stunning, and though he has many legitimate gripes against him, Max Moseley was key in pushing this forward in his time as head of the FIA.
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!
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.
I guess F1 is a much more controlled environment, due to car and circuit design working together as a safety system.
Perhaps F1 safety focuses on minimising injury when things go wrong, whereas aviation systems are optimised to avoid things going wrong in the first place?