Analysing Driver's Attention Level using Computer Vision

This paper presents a system for evaluating the attention level of a driver using computer vision. The system detects head movements, facial expressions and the presence of visual cues that are known to reflect the user's level of alertness. The fusion of these data allows our system to detect both aspects of inattention (drowsiness and distraction), improving the reliability of the monitoring over previous approaches mainly based on detecting only one (drowsiness). Head movements are estimated by robustly tracking a 3D face model with RANSAC and POSIT methods. The 3D model is automatically initialized. Facial expressions are recognized with a model-based method, where different expressions are represented by a set of samples in a low-dimensional manifold in the space of deformations. The system is able to work with different drivers without specific training. The approach has been tested on video sequences recorded in a driving simulator and in real driving situations. The methods are computationally efficient and the system is able to run in real-time.