There isn’t anything stopping Jaguar from patenting more and more eye tracking gadgets in cars. Having introduced the concept of eye tracking cameras that prevent you from falling asleep on the wheel, it has now developed and patented a new tech; this time it is a futuristic concept to control the rear wipers of the car with your own eyes!
Currently, the wipers are operated in an intermittent mode or a full speed one. With this system, it is envisaged that whenever a person looks into the rear view mirror in a rainy period, the wipers will be activated automatically. However, the tech might not be limited to rear windows alone, as Jaguar believes the same principles can be adopted to make front wipers work too.
The patent is named “windscreen clearing system for a vehicle” and Jaguar Land Rover got the bragging rights only this week. It refers to a windscreen clearing system that operates on eye movement in the rear view mirror. However, it doesn’t refer at any point that this invention is for rear mirrors only.
Previously, Jaguar land Rover has worked with Intel and Seeing machines to develop technology that will help the driver staying alert in the event of feeling drowsiness or even distracted. This system is now called the Driver Monitory System or DMS. It uses attention supervising sensors from the dashboard to detect and study the facial behavior of the driver. The windscreen clearing system will take heavy advantage of this previous patent as the eye movements are related to facial movements. An in-car camera in DMS is always focused on the driver’s head while infrared sensors detect movement and follow the course of his eye opening. This is used to calculate the front man’s line of sight and the car’s headlights are controlled with this piece of data.
All this futuristic eye tracking and facial movement detection will help companies a long way in developing safe control systems for the automobile travel. Many accidents are caused by driver’s lack of attention and these systems can alert the driver and even take over if he is too drunk or mentally disturbed.