Your next car may be much safer to drive, and eye tracking will be partly responsible. According to ABI Research, global shipments of factory-installed Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) based on interior facing cameras will reach 6.7 million by 2019.

In a press release issued by ABI, VP and Practice Director Dominique Bonte had this to say:

“DMS solutions are expected to gain new momentum as critical support systems for human-machine interactions (HMI) related to ADAS active safety alerts and autonomous-to-manual handover but also as solutions enabling smart dashboards and contextual HMI in an in-vehicle environment increasingly characterized by information overload.”

What’s particularly interesting is that eye tracking technology is playing a major role in these developments. This technology allows for gaze direction and eyelid movement analysis and will become the key DMS technology, replacing traditional approaches over time. Facial recognition will also factor in, leading to a wider set of applications including personalization, health tracking, security, and distraction and fatigue detection.

Four popular car manufacturers are already using similar technologies: Mercedes-Benz offers Attention Assist, Ford offers Driver Alert, Volvo offers Driver Alert Control, and Volkswagen offers Fatigue Detection. However, these manufacturers rely on a combination of legacy technologies such as forward-facing cameras, steering wheel angle, and vehicle sensors.

Toyota leads the with way with eye tracking technology, as the company has already deployed eye tracking systems in its Lexus brand. Volvo is planning on joining the eye tracking world with its Driver State Estimation system, and GM is working on future deployments as well.

To learn more about how eye tracking technology measures eye movements with precision and reliability, please visit our website.

Image credit: “2011 BMW X6 xDrive30d – NRMA New Cars” by The National Roads and Motorists’ Association is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/