According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) official reports, many traffic accidents have been caused due to drivers’ drowsiness. Previous work based on computer vision techniques achieved drowsiness detection, usually with special hardware that depended on laboratory environments. To overcome limitations of these approaches, a natural light based surveillance system is proposed. The system achieves drowsiness detection in three stages: face segmentation, drowsiness feature extraction and classification. To segment faces, a simplified skin colour model is developed to compute colour distance maps from original facial images. Candidate faces are located using colour distance maps in conjunction with centres of gravity of individual faces. Gegenbauer features are then applied to capture shape information that is related to drowsiness. The computation of these features is based on moments derived from coefficients of Gegenbauer polynomials. To detect the behaviour of a subject, image sequences of his/her face are classified into drowsy and nondrowsy states by a Hidden Markov Model using Gegenbauer features. A sequence is classified as drowsy if the number of drowsy states in the Hidden Markov Model reaches a pre-defined threshold. To evaluate the proposed system, experiments are conducted using 65 video clips that contained a mixture of 54 drowsy and 11 non-drowsy behaviours. The proposed system detected 47 drowsy behaviours from these video clips successfully, and thus resulting in a detection rate of 87%. This proposed system is independent of infrared illuminators that were found to be unreliable in previous systems. Furthermore, the new system deploys multiple facial features and presents a more accurate description of drowsiness rather than a single facial feature proposed by previous authors.

The development of technologies for preventing drowsiness at the wheel is a major challenge in the field of accident avoidance systems. Preventing drowsiness during driving requires a method for accurately detecting a decline in driver alertness and a method for alerting and refreshing the driver. As a detection method, the authors have developed a system that uses image processing technology to analyse images of the road lane with a video camera integrated with steering wheel angle data collection from a car simulation system. The main contribution of this study is a novel algorithm for drowsiness detection and tracking, which is based on the incorporation of information from a road vision system and vehicle performance parameters. Refinement of the algorithm is more precisely detected the level of drowsiness by the implementation of a support vector machine classification for robust and accurate drowsiness warning system. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification technique diminished drowsiness level by using non intrusive systems, using standard equipment sensors, aim to reduce these road accidents caused by drowsiness drivers. This detection system provides a non-contact technique for judging various levels of driver alertness and facilitates early detection of a decline in alertness during driving. The presented results are based on a selection of drowsiness database, which covers almost 60 hours of driving data collection measurements. All the parameters extracted from vehicle parameter data are collected in a driving simulator. With all the features from a real vehicle, a SVM drowsiness detection model is constructed. After several improvements, the classification results showed a very good indication of drowsiness by using those systems.

Thesis (M.S.)--Linköping University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-64). Also available online via the VTI web site (www.vti.se).

The development of technologies for preventing drowsiness at the wheel is a major challenge in the field of accident avoidance systems. Preventing drowsiness during driving requires a method for accurately detecting a decline in driver alertness and a method for alerting and refreshing the driver. As a detection method, the authors have developed a system that uses image processing technology to analyse images of the road lane with a video camera integrated with steering wheel angle data collection from a car simulation system. The main contribution of this study is a novel algorithm for drowsiness detection and tracking, which is based on the incorporation of information from a road vision system and vehicle performance parameters. Refinement of the algorithm is more precisely detected the level of drowsiness by the implementation of a support vector machine classification for robust and accurate drowsiness warning system. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification technique diminished drowsiness level by using non intrusive systems, using standard equipment sensors, aim to reduce these road accidents caused by drowsiness drivers. This detection system provides a non-contact technique for judging various levels of driver alertness and facilitates early detection of a decline in alertness during driving. The presented results are based on a selection of drowsiness database, which covers almost 60 hours of driving data collection measurements. All the parameters extracted from vehicle parameter data are collected in a driving simulator. With all the features from a real vehicle, a SVM drowsiness detection model is constructed. After several improvements, the classification results showed a very good indication of drowsiness by using those systems. / Title page is not included.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Many fatal traffic accidents are caused by fatigued and drowsy drivers. In this context, automatic drowsiness detection devices are an alternative to minimize this issue. In this work, two new methodologies to drowsiness detection are presented, considering a signal obtained from a single electroencephalography channel: (i) drowsiness detection through best m-term approximation, applied to the wavelet expansion of the analysed signal; (ii) drowsiness detection through Mahalanobis distance with wavelet coefficients. The results of both methodologies are compared with a method which uses Mahalanobis distance and Fourier coefficients to drowsiness detection. All methodologies consider the medical evaluation of the brain signal, given by the hypnogram, as a reference. / A sonolência diurna em motoristas, principal consequência da privação de sono, tem sido a causa de diversos acidentes graves de trânsito. Neste contexto, a utilização de dispositivos que alertem o condutor ao detectar automaticamente o estado de sonolência é uma alternativa para a minimização deste problema. Neste trabalho, duas novas metodologias para a detecção automática da sonolência são apresentadas, utilizando um único canal de eletroencefalografia para a obtenção do sinal: (i) detecção da sonolência via melhor aproximação por m-termos, aplicada aos coeficientes wavelets da expansão em série do sinal; e (ii) detecção da sonolência via distância de Mahalanobis e coeficientes wavelets. Os resultados de ambas as metodologias são comparados a uma implementação utilizando distância de Mahalanobis e coeficientes de Fourier. Para todas as metodologias, utiliza-se como referência a avaliação médica do sinal cerebral, dada pelo hipnograma.