EyeRec: An Open-source Data Acquisition Software for Head-mounted Eye-tracking

Abstract

Head-mounted eye tracking offers remarkable opportunities for human computer interaction in dynamic scenarios (e.g., driving assistance). Although a plethora of proprietary software for the acquisition of such eyetracking data exists, all of them are plagued by a critical underlying issue: their source code is not available to the end user. Thus, a researcher is left with few options when facing a scenario in which the proprietary software does not perform as expected. In such a case, the researcher is either forced to change the experimental setup (which is undesirable) or invest a considerable amount of time and money in a different eye-tracking system (which may also underperform). In this paper, we introduce EyeRec, an open-source data acquisition software for head-mounted eye-tracking. Out of the box, EyeRec offers real-time state-of-the-art pupil detection and gaze estimation, which can be easily replaced by user implemented algorithms if desired. Moreover, this software supports multiple head-mounted eye-tracking hardware, records eye and scene videos, and stores pupil and gaze information, which are also available as a real-time stream. Thus, EyeRec can be an efficient means towards facilitating gazed-based human computer interaction research and applications. Available at: www.perception.uni-tuebingen.de