The effect of Time-of-Flight camera integration time on vehicle driver head pose tracking accuracy

Vehicle active safety and driver assistance systems could derive substantial benefit from advanced sensory devices providing quantitative information about the position and orientation of the driver including the driver´s head. Several important applications of this information are Active Head Restraint Systems (AHRS) for whiplash mitigation, driver awareness and fatigue detection, and driver distraction detection. This paper examines how a Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera can be used to obtain an accurate measurement of the driver´s head position and orientation through the analysis of real-time depth and intensity images of the driver´s upper torso and head. A novel technique for using local image intensity compensation has been proposed and experimentally evaluated.