Data Acquisition System for the Characterization of Biomechanical and Ergonomic Thresholds in Driving Vehicles

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study provided a data acquisition system which can be used for collecting bio-mechanical data when driving. These data can be used to set some thresholds which will be beneficial to the drivers in the future. To demonstrate the capability of the proposed system, different scenarios are introduced including roundabout, slalom in the data collection and analysis. The results are promising. Especially, the idea involved in this paper is impressive.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. We have revised totally the manuscript taking into account the different reviewer's comments.

Please see the attachment with the final manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents an interesting study related to the design and development of a data acquisition system for collection of biomechanical data during driving.

Sentence structure throughout the manuscript should be improved since the meaning is sometimes not clear.  This can be easily fixed by editing the sentences for clarity.

Lines 16-18: This first sentence of the abstract is not easily understood.  Does this sentence indicate that a revision of the (EU) 2015/653 has resulted in the addition of additional driving codes?

Lines 29-30: What is habitual driving and maneuvers and how do these maneuvers differ from other maneuvers during driving?

 Lines 38-99: These lines can be condensed to about a paragraph or two since it is not necessary to provide an in-depth review on disability and driving.  The most important part of the Introduction occurs at line 100.

Line 103: Briefly indicate how the cited thesis [7] indicates the design criteria.  Perhaps cite a paper that is more easily accessible to readers or justify these aspects within the context of the paper.

Line 117: Why are the general requirements applicable for this project?  Add more detail here.

Lines 126-136: The structure is not required to be listed here and I suggest that these lines should be removed.

Section 2.1: Add a block diagram of the system to the paper to allow the reader to understand how all the sub-systems fit together.

Figure 1: How was wire management accomplished?  Did wire management affect the biometric data in any way?

Line 184: How is the motion tracker fit with a model of the human body?  Add a short description showing how this model fitting is performed.

Line 195: Are all of the circuits powered from the 12V rail of the vehicle directly, or do you use a transient voltage suppression module?

Figures 4, 5: Commas can be removed from the numbers.  This is a European convention, but periods should be added to allow for a better understanding of the coefficients: i.e. 0.0278.  Also, the Torque axis units can be listed as “N m” with a space.

Line 249: What is a “General” mode for the IMU?  Please describe.

Line 265: If utilized in the abstract, the “Slalom” term should also be defined in the abstract.

Table 1: Is there any difference in vehicle type that affected the biometric data collection?  Why or why not?

Section 3: Please expand the results section to indicate how all the sensors interact and the information that can be obtained from the sensors during the initial tests.  The results section only contains a basic sample of the data.  How do the experiments indicate useful information related to the maneuvers and the assessment of disability.

Line 350:  Here is it not clear how the results are satisfactory.  The authors should add some discussion related to a quantitative analysis of why the results are satisfactory (i.e. what the results demonstrate).  There should be more information added to the results section describing each of the tests.

Author Response

Thank you for profitable your comments. We have revised totally the manuscript taking into account the different reviewer comments.

Please see the attachment with the answers to your comments about the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript describes a data acquisition system designed and developed for the experimental tests that will allow to define the thresholds of biomechanical values (forces on the steering wheel and brake pedals) and ergonomic values (mobility necessary for driving motor vehicles, based on the execution of habitual driving maneuvers.

Despite the thematic being very pertinent and interesting, I have the following suggestions and concerns:
The abstract requires some structure such as: introducing the problem, motivation, the proposed approach, main obtained results and their future impact.
The keywords should be in alphabetical order.
Line 61: "Article 7" of what? (please be more specific since it is in a different paragraph.
Line 179: "These devices are manufactured by Xsens", are there any competitors? If so, isn't it better to provide the equipment specifications rather than doing publicity to a manufacturer.
What is the acquisition system speed? Does it has any fault tolerance?
Authors should make clearer in the discussion at more detail the limitations of the proposed system, emphasize its strengths, relate the obtained results with driving simulators and finally provide a clear conclusion and disclose the future research direction.

Author Response

Thank you for your profitable comments. We have revised totally the manuscript taking into account the different reviewer comments.

Please see the attachment with the answers to your comments about the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx