Smart wearable devices for human exposure vibration measurements on two-wheel vehicles

Abstract

The comfort experienced while driving a motorcycle is becoming a subject of great importance; indeed, the driver is exposed to vibrations that are typically caused by irregular profiles or wear of the road surface as well as by the aerodynamic influence and high-frequency rotation of the motorcycle engine. This paper discloses an original solution that allows the driver to monitor their exposure to vibration during a ride using a low-cost wearable device (smartwatch). A suitable measurement system has been designed and tested using a real motorcycle. The system captures acceleration signals in real time through Bluetooth communication and interfaces with a wearable device with a microcontroller unit that calculates vibrations transmitted through the driver’s hands. Different indexes proposed in the literature are adopted for the comfort analysis in both time and frequency domains. The hand transmitted vibrations are also experimentally compared with those measured through a fixed accelerometer according to the prescription included in the standard ISO 5349 to show the feasibility of the proposed approach in typical application conditions.