Active Auto Safety Gets in Your Face

Cars are getting smarter and beginning to react on their own, but the gray matter manning the helm is still the vehicle's Achilles heel. So to really get inside a driver's head, automakers are going through their faces, analyzing expressions and muscle movements to determine whether the person at the wheel is too distracted, too tired or even too angry to safely control their ride. In conjunction with PSA Peugeot Citroën, scientists at the Transportation Center and Signal Processing 5 Laboratory of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland are developing a technology that uses a camera to capture facial expressions and software to look for telltale signs of distraction as well as emotions that could indicate that the driver is not up to the task at hand. Think of it as a concerned co-pilot who can not only read your mood, but also take action before your mental condition clouds your driving decisions. "We aim at optimally exploiting computer vision technologies to improve safety and comfort in cars through more natural human-machine interfaces," Jean-Philippe Thiran, the director of EPFL's Signal Processing 5 Laboratory, told Wired.