Low-cost eye-tracking for human computer interaction

Abstract

Knowing the user's point of gaze has long held the promise of being a useful methodology for human computer interaction. However, a number of barriers have stood in the way of the integration of eye tracking into everyday applications, including the intrusiveness, robustness, availability, and price of eye-tracking systems. The goal of this thesis is to lower these barriers so that eye tracking can be used to enhance current human computer interfaces. An eye-tracking system was developed. The system consists of an open-hardware design for a digital eye tracker that can be built from low-cost off-the-shelf components, and a set of open-source software tools for digital image capture, manipulation, and analysis in eye-tracking applications. Both infrared and visible spectrum eye-tracking algorithms were developed and used to calculate the user's point of gaze in two types of eye tracking systems, head-mounted and remote eye trackers. The accuracy of eye tracking was found to be approximately one degree of visual angle. It is expected that the availability of this system will facilitate the development of eye-tracking applications and the eventual integration of eye tracking into the next generation of everyday human computer interfaces.