Assistance for the Paralyzed Using Eye Blink Detection

Paralysis is defined as the complete loss of muscle function in any part of the body. It occurs when there is a problem with the passage of messages between the muscles and the brain. Some paralyzed people cannot move even a single part of the body other than their eyes. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to design a real time interactive system that can assist the paralyzed to control appliances such as lights, fans etc. or by playing pre-recorded audio messages, through a predefined number of eye blinks. Image processing techniques have been implemented in order to detect the eye blinks. In our system, the face tracking is accomplished by using a set of trained Haar cascade classifier, and a template matching technique is employed to track the eye. Initially, the involuntary blinks of the paralyzed person are used to locate the patient's eyes by finding the number of connected components in a frame. Once the eyes are detected, an online template is created which is then used to track the patient's eye.