Forming an international team with United States experts, an IIT Kharagpur researcher is developing a new in-car yawn-detection system that will keep an eye on a driver while behind the wheel.
Aurobinda Routray and his colleagues - including Indian-origin researchers Aurobinda Mishra of Vanderbilt University and Mihir Mohanty of ITER - say that their system will warn a drive to pull over and take a break when he/she starts to yawn.
Writing about the new computer programme in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, the researchers have revealed that it is based around an in-car camera hooked up to image-processing software that captures a sequence of images of the driver's face.
The team say that the system analyses changes in the face, and accurately identifies yawning as distinct from other facial movements such as smiling, talking, and singing.
According to them, the yawn frequency can be correlated with fatigue behaviour, and hooked up to a warning system to alert drivers to the need to take a break.
They believe that the programme will be effective at yawn detection regardless of image intensity and contrast, small head movements, viewing angle, spectacle wearing, and skin colour.
The researchers point out that for traffic safety, it is essential to recognise and understand the physical and mental stress leading to fatigue in drivers.
They reckon that a system that watches the driver and analyses their facial expressions would be so much simpler and less invasive.
