CUPIDO: An Analog Ultra-Low-Power and Contactless Eye Blink Detector for Smart Glasses

This paper presents CUPIDO (Circuit for Unobtrusive Palpebral Interpretation and Detection Optimization), a mu W contactless eye blink detection system optimized for wearable applications. The core of CUPIDO is a miniaturized, high-impedance analog front-end and a low-power digital front-end designed to extract event-based features from electrostatic signals produced by the movements of eyelids. Therefore, CUPIDO behaves as a wake-up event-based trigger without requiring a dedicated Microcontroller Unit (MCU). As reported by preliminary in-field measurements, CUPIDO achieves ultra-low-power consumption (385.1 mu W of peak) and high sensitivity (up to 90.5%) in a fully contactless setup, enabling non-invasive eyelid movement and blink detection. With 1 ms latency, CUPIDO offers a low-power, real-time solution for eye blink monitoring and event-based triggering. This makes it ideal for Human-Machine Interface (HMI) applications, eye tracking, and attention monitoring applications.