Eyelid Monitoring System

How often do you fall asleep while driving?
This is a very dangerous event to talk about. It causes accident if one really falls asleep while driving.

So, Toyota, a Japanese car maker, has developed a new system to monitor whether the driver is falling asleep.

This system is to be called Eye-Monitoring System.

It’s an enhancement system to be equipped in the car added to its Pre-Crash Safety System. What does it do? It monitors driver’s eye-lids.
This eye-monitoring system uses monitoring-camera, places in front of the driver, to capture driver’s eyes in real-time. The image processing computer, connected to the camera, will determine how wide or narrow the eyes are opened, based on the position of the upper and lower eye lids. This information will then be further processed and trigger different required actions or alerts to be performed by the vehicle. In this way, the chances of accident due to sleepiness can be reduced.

This development follows Toyota's existing face-monitoring technology--available on the Lexus LS600h--which tracks the orientation of the driver's face and sounds a warning if it detects a sustained period of inattention.

The eye-monitoring system is an interesting idea. Japan, Toyota, has announced that this system will be launched “in the near future”.

References:
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9855399-1.html
http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2008/01/23/toyota-develops-eyelid-monitoring-system/