Face pose estimation with automatic 3D model creation for a driver inattention monitoring application

Texto en inglés y resumen en inglés y españolRecent studies have identified inattention (including distraction and drowsiness) as the main cause of accidents, being responsible of at least 25% of them. Driving distraction has been less studied, since it is more diverse and exhibits a higher risk factor than fatigue. In addition, it is present over half of the inattention involved crashes. The increased presence of In Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) adds to the potential distraction risk and modifies driving behaviour, and thus research on this issue is of vital importance. Many researchers have been working on different approaches to deal with distraction during driving. Among them, Computer Vision is one of the most common, because it allows for a cost effective and non-invasive driver monitoring and sensing. Using Computer Vision techniques it is possible to evaluate some facial movements that characterise the state of attention of a driver. This thesis presents methods to estimate the face pose and gaze direction of a person in real-time, using a stereo camera as a basic for assessing driver distractions. The methods are completely automatic and user-independent. A set of features in the face are identified at initialisation, and used to create a sparse 3D model of the face. These features are tracked from frame to frame, and the model is augmented to cover parts of the face that may have been occluded before. The algorithm is designed to work in a naturalistic driving simulator, which presents challenging low light conditions. We evaluate several techniques to detect features on the face that can be matched between cameras and tracked with success. Well-known methods such as SURF do not return good results, due to the lack of salient points in the face, as well as the low illumination of the images. We introduce a novel multisize technique, based on Harris corner detector and patch correlation. This technique benefits from the better performance of small patches under rotations and illumination changes, and the more robust correlation of the bigger patches under motion blur. The head rotates in a range of ±90º in the yaw angle, and the appearance of the features change noticeably. To deal with these changes, we implement a new re-registering technique that captures new textures of the features as the face rotates. These new textures are incorporated to the model, which mixes the views of both cameras. The captures are taken at regular angle intervals for rotations in yaw, so that each texture is only used in a range of ±7.5º around the capture angle. Rotations in pitch and roll are handled using affine patch warping. The 3D model created at initialisation can only take features in the frontal part of the face, and some of these may occlude during rotations. The accuracy and robustness of the face tracking depends on the number of visible points, so new points are added to the 3D model when new parts of the face are visible from both cameras. Bundle adjustment is used to reduce the accumulated drift of the 3D reconstruction. We estimate the pose from the position of the features in the images and the 3D model using POSIT or Levenberg-Marquardt. A RANSAC process detects incorrectly tracked points, which are not considered for pose estimation. POSIT is faster, while LM obtains more accurate results. Using the model extension and the re-registering technique, we can accurately estimate the pose in the full head rotation range, with error levels that improve the state of the art. A coarse eye direction is composed with the face pose estimation to obtain the gaze and driver's fixation area, parameter which gives much information about the distraction pattern of the driver. The resulting gaze estimation algorithm proposed in this thesis has been tested on a set of driving experiments directed by a team of psychologists in a naturalistic driving simulator. This simulator mimics conditions present in real driving, including weather changes, manoeuvring and distractions due to IVIS. Professional drivers participated in the tests. The driver?s fixation statistics obtained with the proposed system show how the utilisation of IVIS influences the distraction pattern of the drivers, increasing reaction times and affecting the fixation of attention on the road and the surroundings

Face pose estimation with automatic 3D model creation for a driver inattention monitoring application

Texto en inglés y resumen en inglés y españolRecent studies have identified inattention (including distraction and drowsiness) as the main cause of accidents, being responsible of at least 25% of them. Driving distraction has been less studied, since it is more diverse and exhibits a higher risk factor than fatigue. In addition, it is present over half of the inattention involved crashes. The increased presence of In Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) adds to the potential distraction risk and modifies driving behaviour, and thus research on this issue is of vital importance. Many researchers have been working on different approaches to deal with distraction during driving. Among them, Computer Vision is one of the most common, because it allows for a cost effective and non-invasive driver monitoring and sensing. Using Computer Vision techniques it is possible to evaluate some facial movements that characterise the state of attention of a driver. This thesis presents methods to estimate the face pose and gaze direction of a person in real-time, using a stereo camera as a basic for assessing driver distractions. The methods are completely automatic and user-independent. A set of features in the face are identified at initialisation, and used to create a sparse 3D model of the face. These features are tracked from frame to frame, and the model is augmented to cover parts of the face that may have been occluded before. The algorithm is designed to work in a naturalistic driving simulator, which presents challenging low light conditions. We evaluate several techniques to detect features on the face that can be matched between cameras and tracked with success. Well-known methods such as SURF do not return good results, due to the lack of salient points in the face, as well as the low illumination of the images. We introduce a novel multisize technique, based on Harris corner detector and patch correlation. This technique benefits from the better performance of small patches under rotations and illumination changes, and the more robust correlation of the bigger patches under motion blur. The head rotates in a range of ±90º in the yaw angle, and the appearance of the features change noticeably. To deal with these changes, we implement a new re-registering technique that captures new textures of the features as the face rotates. These new textures are incorporated to the model, which mixes the views of both cameras. The captures are taken at regular angle intervals for rotations in yaw, so that each texture is only used in a range of ±7.5º around the capture angle. Rotations in pitch and roll are handled using affine patch warping. The 3D model created at initialisation can only take features in the frontal part of the face, and some of these may occlude during rotations. The accuracy and robustness of the face tracking depends on the number of visible points, so new points are added to the 3D model when new parts of the face are visible from both cameras. Bundle adjustment is used to reduce the accumulated drift of the 3D reconstruction. We estimate the pose from the position of the features in the images and the 3D model using POSIT or Levenberg-Marquardt. A RANSAC process detects incorrectly tracked points, which are not considered for pose estimation. POSIT is faster, while LM obtains more accurate results. Using the model extension and the re-registering technique, we can accurately estimate the pose in the full head rotation range, with error levels that improve the state of the art. A coarse eye direction is composed with the face pose estimation to obtain the gaze and driver's fixation area, parameter which gives much information about the distraction pattern of the driver. The resulting gaze estimation algorithm proposed in this thesis has been tested on a set of driving experiments directed by a team of psychologists in a naturalistic driving simulator. This simulator mimics conditions present in real driving, including weather changes, manoeuvring and distractions due to IVIS. Professional drivers participated in the tests. The driver?s fixation statistics obtained with the proposed system show how the utilisation of IVIS influences the distraction pattern of the drivers, increasing reaction times and affecting the fixation of attention on the road and the surroundings

Driver Fatigue Features Extraction

Driver fatigue is the main cause of traffic accidents. How to extract the effective features of fatigue is important for recognition accuracy and traffic safety. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a new method of driver fatigue features extraction based on the facial image sequence. In this method, first, each facial image in the sequence is divided into nonoverlapping blocks of the same size, and Gabor wavelets are employed to extract multiscale and multiorientation features. Then the mean value and standard deviation of each block’s features are calculated, respectively. Considering the facial performance of human fatigue is a dynamic process that developed over time, each block’s features are analyzed in the sequence. Finally, Adaboost algorithm is applied to select the most discriminating fatigue features. The proposed method was tested on a self-built database which includes a wide range of human subjects of different genders, poses, and illuminations in real-life fatigue conditions. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method

The effect of electronic word of mouth communication on purchase intention moderate by trust: a case online consumer of Bahawalpur Pakistan

The aim of this study is concerned with improving the previous research finding complete filling the research gaps and introducing the e-WOM on purchase intention and brand trust as a moderator between the e-WOM, and purchase intention an online user in Bahawalpur city Pakistan, therefore this study was a focus at linking the research gap of previous literature of past study based on individual awareness from the real-life experience. we collected data from the online user of the Bahawalpur Pakistan. In this study convenience sampling has been used to collect data and instruments of this study adopted from the previous study. The quantitative research methodology used to collect data, survey method was used to assemble data for this study, 300 questionnaire were distributed in Bahawalpur City due to the ease, reliability, and simplicity, effective recovery rate of 67% as a result 202 valid response was obtained for the effect of e-WOM on purchase intention and moderator analysis has been performed. Hypotheses of this research are analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) based on Partial Least Square (PLS). The result of this research is e-WOM significantly positive effect on purchase intention and moderator role of trust significantly affects the relationship between e-WOM, and purchase intention. The addition of brand trust in the model has contributed to the explanatory power, some studied was conduct on brand trust as a moderator and this study has contributed to the literature in this favor. significantly this study focused on current marketing research. Unlike past studies focused on western context, this study has extended the regional literature on e-WOM, and purchase intention to be intergrading in Bahawalpur Pakistan context. Lastly, future studies are recommended to examine the effect of trust in other countries allow for the comparison of the findings

Detection of Driver Drowsiness and Distraction Using Computer Vision and Machine Learning Approaches

Drowsiness and distracted driving are leading factor in most car crashes and near-crashes. This research study explores and investigates the applications of both conventional computer vision and deep learning approaches for the detection of drowsiness and distraction in drivers. In the first part of this MPhil research study conventional computer vision approaches was studied to develop a robust drowsiness and distraction system based on yawning detection, head pose detection and eye blinking detection. These algorithms were implemented by using existing human crafted features. Experiments were performed for the detection and classification with small image datasets to evaluate and measure the performance of system. It was observed that the use of human crafted features together with a robust classifier such as SVM gives better performance in comparison to previous approaches. Though, the results were satisfactorily, there are many drawbacks and challenges associated with conventional computer vision approaches, such as definition and extraction of human crafted features, thus making these conventional algorithms to be subjective in nature and less adaptive in practice. In contrast, deep learning approaches automates the feature selection process and can be trained to learn the most discriminative features without any input from human. In the second half of this research study, the use of deep learning approaches for the detection of distracted driving was investigated. It was observed that one of the advantages of the applied methodology and technique for distraction detection includes and illustrates the contribution of CNN enhancement to a better pattern recognition accuracy and its ability to learn features from various regions of a human body simultaneously. The comparison of the performance of four convolutional deep net architectures (AlexNet, ResNet, MobileNet and NASNet) was carried out, investigated triplet training and explored the impact of combining a support vector classifier (SVC) with a trained deep net. The images used in our experiments with the deep nets are from the State Farm Distracted Driver Detection dataset hosted on Kaggle, each of which captures the entire body of a driver. The best results were obtained with the NASNet trained using triplet loss and combined with an SVC. It was observed that one of the advantages of deep learning approaches are their ability to learn discriminative features from various regions of a human body simultaneously. The ability has enabled deep learning approaches to reach accuracy at human level.

A Method for Recognizing Fatigue Driving Based on Dempster-Shafer Theory and Fuzzy Neural Network

This study proposes a method based on Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) and fuzzy neural network (FNN) to improve the reliability of recognizing fatigue driving. This method measures driving states using multifeature fusion. First, FNN is introduced to obtain the basic probability assignment (BPA) of each piece of evidence given the lack of a general solution to the definition of BPA function. Second, a modified algorithm that revises conflict evidence is proposed to reduce unreasonable fusion results when unreliable information exists. Finally, the recognition result is given according to the combination of revised evidence based on Dempster’s rule. Experiment results demonstrate that the recognition method proposed in this paper can obtain reasonable results with the combination of information given by multiple features. The proposed method can also effectively and accurately describe driving states

A Light on Physiological Sensors for Efficient Driver Drowsiness Detection System

International audienceThe significant advance in bio-sensor technologies hold promise to monitor human physiologicalsignals in real time. In the context of public safety, such technology knows notable research investigations toobjectively detect early stage of driver drowsiness that impairs driver performance under various conditions.Seeking for low-cost, compact yet reliable sensing technology that can provide a solution to drowsy stateproblem is challenging. While some enduring solutions have been available as prototypes for a while, many ofthese technologies are now in the development, validation testing, or even commercialization stages. Thecontribution of this paper is to assess current progress in the development of bio-sensors based driver drowsinessdetection technologies and study their fundamental specifications to achieve accuracy requirements. Existingmarket and research products are then ranked following the discussed specifications. The finding of this work isto provide a methodology to facilitate making the appropriate hardware choice to implement efficient yet lowcostdrowsiness detection system using existing market physiological based sensors

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based systems to monitor driver fatigue: a review

An efficient system that is capable to detect driver fatigue is urgently needed to help avoid road crashes. Recently, there has been an increase of interest in the application of electroencephalogram (EEG) to detect driver fatigue. Feature extraction and signal classification are the most critical steps in the EEG signal analysis. A reliable method for feature extraction is important to obtain robust signal classification. Meanwhile, a robust algorithm for signal classification will accurately classify the feature to a particular class. This paper concisely reviews the pros and cons of the existing techniques for feature extraction and signal classification and its fatigue detection accuracy performance. The integration of combined entropy (feature extraction) with support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (classifier) gives the best fatigue detection accuracy of 98.7% and 97.5% respectively. The outcomes from this study will guide future researchers in choosing a suitable technique for feature extraction and signal classification for EEG data processing and shed light on directions for future research and development of driver fatigue countermeasures