COVID-19 means truckers need facemask-aware driver monitoring systems

Enlarge / A member of UK rave outfit Altern-8, or a driver not wearing his seatbelt? (credit: Eyesight Technologies)

After much political to-ing and fro-ing, it seems everyone is now on the same page: people should wear face masks in public while the coronavirus pandemic rages. A mask might not stop you from getting sick, but it may well prevent you from infecting other people. But what happens if you need to wear a face mask while operating a machine that depends upon seeing your face? I am of course referring to fleet drivers who drive vehicles with vision-based driver monitoring systems (DMSes), and the answer is "you need to update your DMS to work with face masks." Which is exactly what Israeli company Eyesight Technologies has done.

A lot of the focus on DMSes has been for passenger vehicles in relation to partly automated driver aids like GM's Super Cruise (which uses gaze-tracking to ensure the driver is looking at the road ahead as a condition for operation) or Tesla's Autopilot (which has been repeatedly criticized by federal safety agencies for failing to do the same).

But a DMS isn't just a good idea for a hands-free driving aid; people can and do get distracted in plain-old regular cars, too. Which is why automakers like Subaru and Mazda equip their vehicles with camera-based DMSes here in the US and abroad.

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