The contactless active optical sensor for vehicle driver fatigue detection

In this paper we present the contactless active optical sensor for driver fatigue detection in variable weather and lighting conditions. The fatigue was determined by monitoring activity of the eyes. In our case the bright pupil effect was used. The brightness of the pupil was increased by developing a new keying technique of controlling the IR emitter signal. This technique caused the brightness to increase in comparison to the continuous signal by 50%on average. The new developed sensor, as well as, the image processing algorithm was used during the construction of the driver fatigue monitoring system. The system detects fatigue by analyzing the variability of the following signals: PERCLOSE, PEROPEN, blink frequency, activity of the eyes and pupil diameter.