Camera Based Localization of a Smartphone in a Vehicle

Distracted driving is any activity that could divert a person's attention away from the primary task of driving. All distractions endanger driver, passenger, and bystander safety. Cell phone usage while driving is a major distraction. Multiple solutions have been proposed on limiting smart phone functionality when being used by a driver. However, it remains challenge to detect if it is indeed the driver using the Smartphone. The objective of this paper is to address the fundamental problem of distinguishing the driver from passengers, non-intrusively, i.e., enabling driver phone detection without relying on any particular situations, events, and dedicated hardware devices. We rely on the ubiquitous camera feature of cell phones to determine the position of the camera (hence, cell phone) in a vehicle. Compared with the stateof- the-art solutions, a key property of our solution is our system only utilizes the camera functionality of a Smartphone. Images captured from a camera are compared with reference images by applying image registration methods, making a comparison. Through extensive experimental results and analysis, we demonstrate that our methodology can provide accurate localization of a Smartphone, thus effectively distinguishing driver from passengers