Intelligent Driver Sleep Detection and Alerting System

Abstract

Transportation has already become a vital part of the daily routine of people all around the world. With the increasing demand for transportation, road traffic accidents have also been increasing exponentially. Further, road traffic accidents are found to be one of the critical causes of annual deaths, injuries, and damages worldwide. Among the minor and fatal crashes, distracted driving has been identified as one of the leading causes. Sleepiness/drowsiness or fatigue in drivers can be stated as the most common reasons, and as an unavoidable and unintentional cause for distraction, because most of the time the driver would not be aware of the condition until facing a critical incident. Therefore, identifying sleepiness/drowsiness at the initial stages, and alerting the driver, would contribute to minimizing the risk of such road traffic accidents. The paper presents an automated system that is capable of identifying sleepiness/drowsiness in drivers in the initial stages and immediately alerting the driver. Furthermore, given the criticality of the situation, the system also operates a new feature of simultaneously sharing the current location of the vehicle to a pre-defined close contact of the driver to further minimize the risks and as a prevention mechanism.