Novel adaptive eye detection and tracking for challenging lighting conditions

Abstract

The paper develops a novel technique that significantly improves the performance of Haar-like feature-based object detectors in terms of speed, detection rate under difficult lighting conditions, and reduced number of false-positives. The method is implemented and validated for driver monitoring under very dark, very bright, and normal conditions. The framework includes a fast adaptive detector designed to cope with rapid lighting variations, as well as an implementation of a Kalman filter for reducing the search region and indirect support of eye monitoring and tracking. The proposed methodology effectively works under low-light conditions without using infrared illumination or any other extra lighting support. Experimental results, performance evaluation, and comparing a standard Haar-like detector with the proposed adaptive eye detector, show noticeable improvements. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.