Assistance for the Paralyzed Using Eye Blink Detection

Paralysis is defined as the complete loss of muscle function in any part of the body. It occurs when there is a problem with the passage of messages between the muscles and the brain. Some paralyzed people cannot move even a single part of the body other than their eyes. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to design a real time interactive system that can assist the paralyzed to control appliances such as lights, fans etc. or by playing pre-recorded audio messages, through a predefined number of eye blinks. Image processing techniques have been implemented in order to detect the eye blinks. In our system, the face tracking is accomplished by using a set of trained Haar cascade classifier, and a template matching technique is employed to track the eye. Initially, the involuntary blinks of the paralyzed person are used to locate the patient´s eyes by finding the number of connected components in a frame. Once the eyes are detected, an online template is created which is then used to track the patient´s eye.