| International Journal of Computer Applications |
| Foundation of Computer Science (FCS), NY, USA |
| Volume 187 - Number 84 |
| Year of Publication: 2026 |
| Authors: Louie I. Calma Jr., Christian Harvey G. Cayanan, Ian Carlo A. Reyes, Melissa Pantig |
10.5120/ijca2026926479
|
Louie I. Calma Jr., Christian Harvey G. Cayanan, Ian Carlo A. Reyes, Melissa Pantig . SnoozeNet: An Ensemble CNN-MediaPipe Feature-based Pipeline with Temporal Convolutional Networks for Real-Time Driver Drowsiness Detection. International Journal of Computer Applications. 187, 84 ( Feb 2026), 59-66. DOI=10.5120/ijca2026926479
Driver drowsiness is a significant contributor to road accidents, often leading to impaired focus, delayed reaction times, and poor decision-making. To address this issue, this study introduces SnoozeNet, a lightweight and efficient real-time driver drowsiness detection system that combines Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), MediaPipe facial landmark tracking, and Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs). The model extracts spatial features from eye and mouth regions to detect blink rate, eye closure, and yawning, while MediaPipe provides head pose estimations to assess posture and nodding behavior. These features are fused and processed by a TCN to model behavioral transitions over time. The system was trained on diverse public datasets and evaluated against LSTM-based baselines, showing improved accuracy, training efficiency, and responsiveness. Results confirm that the lightweight CNN-MediaPipe-TCN pipeline effectively detects drowsiness-related facial cues across varied lighting conditions and facial structures, offering a robust and deployable solution for real-world driver-monitoring applications. Comprehensive validation showed that the pipeline achieved strong performance with an overall accuracy of 94.6%, F1-score of 0.930, and AUROC of 0.984, while delivering real-time classification in a browser-based application at approximately 15 FPS.