An Improved and Portable Eye-Blink Duration Detection System to Warn of Driver Fatigue

Driver fatigue is a major cause of vehicle accidents. The measurement of eye-blink durations is one of the main schemes to warn of driver fatigue. This article proposes a methodology to detect eye-blink duration, which is similar to electro-oculography (EOG), but only two electrode pads are employed in our detection system. Simple electrode pads were used as sensors to obtain the correct eyelid EOG signal and remove the artificial pseudo-signal (non EOG). A real-time microcontroller calculates and shows the blink-durations and number of blinks. The measurement results are analyzed to warn of driver fatigue. According to our measurements, the numbers of blinks can be measured with high accuracy. The accuracy of blink duration determination was close to 95% via a 1 kHz sampling rate that is equivalent to using a video camera.