Intelligent process control via gaze detection technology

Abstract

Gaze detection is to locate the position on a monitor screen where a user is looking. In our work, we implement it with a computer vision system setting a camera above a monitor, and a user moves (rotates and/or translates) his face to gaze at a different position on the monitor. In our case, the user is requested to keep the pupils of his/her eyes fixed when he/she gazes at a different position on the monitor screen; though we are working on to relax this restriction. Till now, we have tried different methods and among them, the proposed Two Neural Networks method shows the best results. For application of the gaze detection techniques to the user-interface of a control program, we supplement two additional techniques. One is to drag a mouse cursor by moving his/her face after initially placing the cursor by gazing, and another is to click the cursor by winking one eye. These are applied to user-interface of a process control program in three different ways. Firstly, even when both hands are busy in doing a work, the user can still control the monitor screen by gazing, dragging and winking. Secondly, if the user is absent and not in front of the monitor when important states occur, then the system can record and replay them later when the user returns. Finally, as the system knows where the user is looking, if an emergency occurs at a different point from where he/she is looking, then the system can display a warning signal. This paper also includes subjective and objective experimental results obtained from the tests by applying the underlined techniques to a process control for chemical vapor decomposition.