"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).
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.
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.
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.
If you don't mind me asking, what's your technical background? You seem well versed in the technical side of things (plus, you read HN!). I had kind of assumed your background was mostly racing.
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.
Although I've spent the majority of my professional life driving around in circles, I have always been interested in technology, and worked in IT before I started racing professionally. Learning about materials, electronics, and manufacturing have been mainly through trial and error over the past 2 years, and working with some very talented people in their respective fields.
Great to hear that there's been some value in something I've said in an interview!
Alan, if you put your email in your profile, or email me at mine, we can get in touch with the HN mods and get an AMA together. I think it’s really worth doing.
I totally agree that SpO2 is the obvious first choice to prove out this system, and I think it's a great idea in general. It's easy to measure, and provides useful physiological information (particularly as trend data). I was just quibbling with "immediately".
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Interesting to read this. It sounds like the opposite approach a rescue crew would take in a motorsport environment, in most cases.
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?
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?
> 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.
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)
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.
It's also important to note that it's only a fairly recent development that fatal injuries in F1 are a rarity. The previous last death in F1 was Ayrton Senna in 1994, with Barrichello being injured and Roland Ratzenberger dying that same weekend. Ayrton was a big proponent of driver safety, and his death sparked a huge push to improve safety in the sport.
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.
Indeed - just look at Kubica's 300 Kph crash in Canada[1] - that would more than likely not have been survivable in the early to mid 90's.
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.
Exactly this. And I'd add that because we are now looking for tiny incremental improvements (most of the big, obvious things have been addressed already), we're going to need some data in the areas we're looking to improve.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).