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	This project concerned the development of a system to measure the driver actuations on vehicle pedals. The system was planned to fulfil important features, such as: 1) being easy-to-use and flexible, 2) non-invasiveness, 3) robustness, 4) real-time monitoring and 5) low cost unit and operation. In order to develop the monitoring system, this project was subdivided in three parts: the hardware development, the software development and data analysis. After the completion of the hardware and software it was possible to start the data collection. Data from the vehicle pedals was collected in two states: stationary driving and real driving conditions.
	
	The results obtained on the stationary conditions indicated that generally the system was easy-to-use, mainly due to its quick and effortless installation, and flexible enough to install in different pedals and vehicles. Thus, it was possible to validate the flexibility and ease of use of the system.
	
	On real driving conditions other aspects were tested, such as: non-invasiveness, robustness and the capacity to monitor the pedals in real-time. While testing the system, it was generally not an obstacle to the driver, which indicates its non-invasiveness. Nonetheless, the system to fix the case on the pedals was occasionally not very effective, leading to some oscillations and dismounts; this could be fixed by using a belt as the fastening system. When collecting data the system generally showed robustness as it was also possible to monitor the pedals in real-time; the data displayed on the user interface correlated well with the actuations on the pedal. Considering the data from real driving situations, generally the clutch pedal activity is higher than the brake pedal, which indicates that a major part of the driving is actually controlled by the clutch. Also, as expected, the force values on the brake pedal appear to be inversely correlated with the velocity. In addition, it was possible to differentiate the behaviour of the driver actuation on the monitored pedals, distinguishing driving patterns related to different drivers. 
	
	It was also possible to find a proportionality constant between the energy used on the brake pedal and the energy used to stop the car. This constant allows the definition of a braking model of the vehicle based on the pedals actuation, where the energy necessary to stop the vehicle can be found just by knowing the force applied on the pedals and the car velocity. This model could be an advantage when integrated with other systems. For example, there are visual systems to detect pedestrians and warn the driver if a pedestrian is crossing the road. These systems calculate the necessary distance to brake safely based mainly in the car velocity and the distance to the pedestrian. However, there are situations where the braking system of the car is debilitated, increasing the time necessary to brake safely and leading to possible failures of the system. By integrating the braking model based on the pedals actuation with other variables of the car, a more accurately system to calculate the distance necessary to stop the car safely could be developed.
		
	Even though the system is operational and fulfils important established criteria, several improvements could be done. For instance, if the acquisition board was replaced by a custom electronic device with bluetooth communication, an Android or iOS interface application could be developed. Because these interface applications would be able communicate with the system, the flexibility and convenience of the system would be improved. This together with the replacement of other elements by custom electronic devices, would make the system more accessible for future users by reducing unit and operation costs. Furthermore, for the system to become even more flexible and convenient, a device with Ethernet or Wifi connection could be used. With the possibility to create a local network and with an user interface developed in HTML and PHP languages, it would be possible to communicate with the system from any electronic device that has a browser. In addition, it would be important to improve not only the system to securely fix the sensors case on the pedals but also the fastening system of the infrared (IR) sensors, in order to make the orientation adjustment mechanism more efficient.
	 
	Overall, it was developed a easy-to-use, flexible, non-invasive and robust system capable of monitoring the human actuation on the vehicle pedals in real time. By connecting this monitoring system to a more complete information system it would be possible to correlate the data collected from the pedals with other variables of the car. With this, the system could not only evaluate the driver actuations in order to detect inefficient or risky usage of the pedals, but also to predict some dangerous situations by warning the driver in time so that he could act and ultimately prevent them.

	Finally, as a prototype, the system can not bet considered low-cost. By replacing the acquisition board for other custom electronics devices, the system would become more flexible and more accessible for future users. The sensing unit prices were approximately: $\sim$45\euro{} for the Loadcells, $\sim$6\euro{} for the Force Sensitive Resistors and $\sim$13\euro{} for the IR sensors. 
	
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