Real-Time Eye, Gaze, and Face Pose Tracking for Monitoring Driver Vigilance

T his paper describes a real-time prototype computer vision system for monitoring driver vigilance. The main components of the system consists of a remotely located video CCD camera, a specially designed hardware system for real-time image acquisition and for controlling the illuminator and the alarm system, and various computer vision algorithms for simultaneously, real-time and non-intrusively monitoring various visual bio-behaviors that typically characterize a driver’s level of vigilance. The visual behaviors include eyelid movement, face orientation, and gaze movement (pupil movement). The system was tested in a simulating environment with subjects of different ethnic backgrounds, different genders, ages, with/without glasses, and under different illumination conditions, and it was found very robust, reliable and accurate.