Smart Helmet for Vital Sign-Based Heatstroke Detection Using Support Vector Machine

Recently, owing to global warming, average summer temperatures are increasing and the number of hot days is increasing is increasing, which leads to an increase in heat stroke. In particular, outdoor workers directly exposed to the heat are at higher risk of heat stroke; therefore, preventing heat-related illnesses and managing safety have become important. Although various wearable devices have been developed to prevent heat stroke for outdoor workers, applying various sensors to the safety helmets that workers must wear is an excellent alternative. In this study, we developed a smart helmet that measures various vital signs of the wearer such as body temperature, heart rate, and sweat rate; external environmental signals such as temperature and humidity; and movement signals of the wearer such as roll and pitch angles. The smart helmet can acquire the various data by connecting with a smartphone application. Environmental data can check the status of heat wave advisory, and the individual vital signs can monitor the health of workers. In addition, we developed an algorithm that classifies the risk of heat-related illness as normal and abnormal by inputting a set of vital signs of the wearer using a support vector machine technique, which is a machine learning technique that allows for rapid binary classification with high reliability. Furthermore, the classified results suggest that the safety manager can supervise the prevention of heat stroke by receiving feedback from the control system.