Facial-feature based Human-Computer Interface for disabled people

In recent years there has been an increased interest in Human-Computer Interaction Systems allowing for more natural communication with machines. Such systems are especially important for elderly and disabled persons. Face detection has always been a vast research field in the computer vision world, considering that it is the backbone of any application that deals with the human face (e.g. biometric systems). The paper presents a vision & feature-based system for detection of long voluntary eye blinks and interpretation of blink patterns for communication between man and machine. Supplemented by the mechanism for detecting multiple eye blinks, this paper provides a complete solution for building intelligent hands-free input devices. Due to recent increase of computer power and decrease of camera cost, it became very common to see a camera on top of a computer monitor. The described technique uses off-the self cameras that allow one for tracking nose features, eyebrows and head position robustly and precisely in both 2D and 3D coordinates. This tracking and monitoring allows user to give input to the computer machine and access the entire system in a hands free manner. The detailed theory behind the technology is presented in the paper and the results from running several perceptual user interfaces built with this technology are shown.