Embedded real time blink detection system with heart rate sensing for driver fatigue monitoring

Abstract

Road accidents are a common phenomenon in our daily lives. Each year these road accidents led to many deaths, fatal injuries and economic losses all over the world. One of the major reasons of these accidents is the drowsiness of drivers. Thus, it is necessary to develop a method to detect the driver’s drowsiness to reduce the accident rates. This paper describes a research and project development to detect the drowsiness of drivers. A device was developed that uses two methods to detect the drowsiness. One method was to use the heart beat sensor to check if the heartbeat lies within the threshold value range. The other method was to detect the eye blinking using image processing to check the eyelid’s position. The output of both the methods is given as input to the Raspberry Pi. The output from the device is connected to a buzzer that buzzes if the device detects that the driver is drowsy. The final system was implemented and it quite efficiently monitors and detects the driver’s fatigue.