Reliable Eye-Blinking Detection With Millimeter-Wave Radar Glasses

One of the most felt and serious problems of our society involves the capability to enable the communication of people affected by neurodegenerative pathologies. Indeed, the inability to communicate as a consequence of the patient paralysis is one of the main detrimental effects of such diseases. Since the head is the last affected part of the body, an accepted solution to enable the communication considers the detection of intentional eye blinking to be interpreted as messages or commands. In this article, a millimeter-wave (mm-wave) Doppler radar is devoted to this purpose with advantages in terms of size, computational cost, privacy concerns, and immunity to different light conditions, compared with competing optical image-based technologies. Displacement and micro-Doppler signature are measured with a 120-GHz radar to accurately recognize intentional motions. After analyzing the performance dependence on different radar positions, the radar has been integrated into a glass frame. This allowed us to mitigate the effects of random body motion as a consequence of the movements due to both the physiological activity and external factors. This contribution aims to demonstrate the radar's effectiveness as assistive systems to enable the patient's communication.