Research Article On-Road Driver Monitoring System Based on a Solar-Powered In-Vehicle Embedded Platform Yen-Lin Chen, 1 Chao-Wei Yu, 1 Zi-Jie Chien, 2 Chin-Hsuan Liu, 1 and Hsin-Han Chiang 3 1 Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 10608, Taiwan 2 Department of Energy and Refrigerating Air-Conditioning Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 10608, Taiwan 3 Department of Electrical Engineering, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City 24205, Taiwan Correspondence should be addressed to Hsin-Han Chiang; hsinhan@ee.u.edu.tw Received 16 May 2014; Accepted 16 June 2014; Published 3 July 2014 Academic Editor: Ching-Song Jwo Copyright © 2014 Yen-Lin Chen et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Tis study presents an on-road driver monitoring system, which is implemented on a stand-alone in-vehicle embedded system and driven by efective solar cells. Te driver monitoring function is performed by an efcient eye detection technique. Trough the driver’s eye movements captured from the camera, the attention states of the driver can be determined and any fatigue states can be avoided. Tis driver monitoring technique is implemented on a low-power embedded in-vehicle platform. Besides, this study also proposed monitoring machinery that can detect the brightness around the car to efectively determine whether this in-vehicle system is driven by the solar cells or by the vehicle battery. On sunny days, the in-vehicle system can be powered by solar cell in places without the vehicle battery. While in the evenings or on rainy days, the ambient solar brightness is insufcient, and the system is powered by the vehicle battery. Te proposed system was tested under the conditions that the solar irradiance is 10 to 113 W/m 2 and solar energy and brightness at 10 to 170. From the testing results, when the outside solar radiation is high, the brightness of the inside of the car is increased, and the eye detection accuracy can also increase as well. Terefore, this solar powered driver monitoring system can be efciently applied to electric cars to save energy consumption and promote the driving safety. 1. Introduction Te economic development has caused large amount of energy to be consumed, and largely consumption of petro- chemical inventories, resulting in the energy crisis. To reduce the petrochemical energy consumption on vehicles, the elec- tric cars arise. In order to achieve higher endurance driving, we should care about the car battery power. Te in-vehicle instruments in the electric cars also consume electric energy and may reduce the energy for car driving. Moreover, there are many trafc accidents which occur due to the inattentive and fatigued driving. Tus, an efective monitoring system for drivers’ attention states is also very important for the development of electric cars. Terefore, the solar energy can be adopted to drive the in-vehicle embedded computing platform to conduct the driver monitoring functions, and both the electric energy consumption and the driving safety can be efectively achieved. Photovoltaic (PV) technology is one of the most impor- tant renewable sources of energy generation. Since the frst recognition in 1839 [1], there have been many research works on the performance of PV. However, efciency improvement and cost reduction of PV technology still need many eforts. Te solar cells based on crystalline silicon (c-Si) are known as materials in frst generation solar cell [2]. From the points of view on the cost, performance, and processibility, the applications of new advanced materials such as amorphous silicon (a-Si), cadmium telluride (CdTe), and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) are achieved in the second and third generations of solar cells. Typical conversion efciencies of frst generation technologies are currently 15% to 20%, whereas those of second generation technologies are cur- rently 7% to 15% [3]. Photovoltaic system can be categorized as stand-alone photovoltaic system and grid-connected photovoltaic system [4]. Te stand-alone systems do not supply power to the grid. Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Photoenergy Volume 2014, Article ID 309578, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/309578