Inspiration
Drowsy driving accounts for 72,000 car crashes, 44,000 injuries, and 800 deaths a year. Currently, the only solution to combat sleep deprivation is caffeine supplements. In an effort to provide a more sustainable solution, we propose "Drowsy Drivers."
What it does
The program detects user awareness through images taken of the driver's face. MATLAB then isolates the eyes in the photo and determines whether the user's eyes are open or closed. The program will then notify the user that their eyes are closed.
Challenges we ran into
Being able to identify the whites of the eyes gave inconsistent results. To amend this, we figured that when people drive, there are usually light shining on the driver from oncoming traffic, street lights, or car interior lights. From this, we modified the program to isolate the reflection of these lights on the retina to determine driver awareness.
What we learned
In the process of building our project, we learned how to isolate certain parts of an image through MATLAB, how to create a notification system, and how to access device cameras.
What's next for Drowsy Drivers
We would like to expand our program for use in mobile devices for simplified use in vehicles. Furthermore, we would like to look into incorporating biosensors or smartwatch compatibility to measure other factors that could other effects of drowsiness such as heart rate and lethargic movement.
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