Driver drowsiness detection using face expression recognition

An important application of machine vision and image processing could be driver drowsiness detection system due to its high importance. In recent years there have been many research projects reported in the literature in this field. In this paper, unlike conventional drowsiness detection methods, which are based on the eye states alone, we used facial expressions to detect drowsiness. There are many challenges involving drowsiness detection systems. Among the important aspects are: change of intensity due to lighting conditions, the presence of glasses and beard on the face of the person. In this project, we propose and implement a hardware system which is based on infrared light and can be used in resolving these problems. In the proposed method, following the face detection step, the facial components that are more important and considered as the most effective for drowsiness, are extracted and tracked in video sequence frames. The system has been tested and implemented in a real environment.