Falling asleep at the wheel has been frowned upon for years now, and finally someone not named Coffee has decided to do something about it.

The Integrated Eyetracker is being developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, in freeway friendly Germany. It uses up to six cameras mounted on the dashboard, none larger than 3 or 4 millimeters in diameter, and evaluates the resulting 200 images per second to guess what the driver’s line of vision is, even when not looking straight ahead.

If it detects closed eyes for more than you’ve set it to be comfortable with, it beeps you back into fuel-injected reality. The system can be installed in any car, without the need for an onboard computer or laptop (it comes with its own processor), and does its magic by interpolating 3D space from its numerous cameras.

The Eyetracker is not on sale right now – it will be presented at Vision Expo in Stuttgart in November. Here’s to hoping there’s a swivel mount and hidden software mode that lets you aim the cameras at the road for increased driving IQ that will see you swerving omnipotently like Mel Gibson after a couple beers.

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