Eye blinking-based method for detecting driver drowsiness

Drowsy driving is a major cause of traffic accidents. Eye blinking is considered as important evidence of driver drowsiness. In this paper, a portable and low cost device for monitoring a driver's drowsiness is proposed. The proposed system consists of two main parts that detect eye blinking based on IR sensors mounted on eyewear. Depending on the reflected and absorbed IR radiation, this system detects and classifies the eye blinking into normal blinking (NB) or prolonged blinking (PB). The detected prolonged blinking is used to trigger an audio/visual alarm system which draws the driver's attention back. The system was simulated initially by LabVIEW® software. Moreover, the system was bench tested on 15 adult volunteers; eye blinking were detected and classified successfully for all subjects. The results of this research are promising and additional investigation is required to further improve the method.