Abstract: A system and method for detecting and warning of an impaired operator, such as a drowsy vehicle/machine operator or air traffic controller. The system and method employ an imaging apparatus which produces consecutive digital images including the face and eyes of an operator. There is an eye finding unit which determines the location of the operator's eyes within each digital image, and generates correlation coefficients corresponding to each eye which quantify the degree of correspondence between pixels associated with the location of the operator's eye in an immediately preceding image in comparison to pixels associated with the location of the operator's eye in a current image. An impaired operator detection unit is used to average the first N consecutive correlation coefficients generated to generate a first average correlation coefficient.

Abstract: A system and method for finding and tracking the location of a subject's eyes. This system and method employs an imaging apparatus which produces digital image frames including the face and eyes of a subject. An eye position finding and tracking apparatus is also included to average the intensity representing pixel values within respective M.sub.x by M.sub.y pixel blocks of a digitized image frame to create elements of output matrices. Then, elements of the output matrices are compared to various threshold values. These threshold values are chosen so as to identify which matrix elements correspond to a M.sub.x by M.sub.y pixel block potentially representing an image of the subject's pupil and at least the portion of the subject's iris (i.e. a potential eye location). Once the flagged matrix elements have been determined, any M.sub.x by M.sub.y pixel block corresponding to a flagged matrix element can be designated as an actual subject eye location.