Tesla cars learn to recognise driver drowsiness

Tesla has introduced in-car driver monitoring to track yawns, blinks and other signs of drowsiness.

New features were spotted by a Twitter user under the handle Green, who analyses the electric-car maker’s software.

Looks like Tesla is planning a big boost to (camera based) driver monitoring.
They are now tracking additional things like how many yawns the driver had recently, how many blinks and how long they were, leaning. All this is to calculate how drowsy the driver is.

— green (@greentheonly) May 13, 2023

According to him, the technology works not only when Autopilot or FSD Beta is engaged. Green asserts that the actions are recognised even when drivers are manually controlling the car.

“It seems they plan to apply this even without Autopilot (which is very sensible), given how well centred the driving is and how many warnings and corrections have occurred recently,” he wrote.

However, Green did not find information on how Tesla plans to use the data.

The automaker has long faced criticism for failing to police the behaviour of users of Autopilot and FSD. For years, Tesla monitored drivers only via the steering wheel.

In 2021, the company deployed interior cameras. Neural networks were meant to ensure the driver pays attention to the road.

Earlier in October, engineers showed that robotaxis could recognise hands on the wheel.

In January 2023, the German police pursued Tesla with a sleeping driver.