Detection method of skin region by near-IR spectrum multi-band

Abstract

Many active safety technologies for the driver support system are developing. Most of the traffic accidents are caused by driver's inattentive or drowsy. We are developing a driver support system that protects from traffic accidents by these causes. Our purpose is to detect the driver's face region by using a camera. A lot of face detection methods are proposed, but there is not a technique addressing every environment inside the car. For example, skin color segmentation can not detect the skin region in the night, because it has to light up the driver by bright light. In this paper, we propose a skin detection method by the unique reflection characteristics of the materials. Our method is very simple algorithm. We developed a skin detection system, and confirmed effectiveness by the evaluation experiment in indoor environment, and showed the effectiveness by a driving experiment in the night.