Remote Eye Gaze Tracking Research Articles

Remote Eye Gaze Tracking Research: A Comparative Evaluation on Past and Recent Progress

Several decades of eye related research has shown how valuable eye gaze data are for applications that are essential to human daily life. Eye gaze data in a broad sense has been used in research and systems for eye movements, eye tracking, and eye gaze tracking. Since early 2000, eye gaze tracking systems have emerged as interactive gaze-based systems that could be remotely deployed and operated, known as remote eye gaze tracking (REGT) systems. The drop point of visual attention known as point of gaze (PoG), and the direction of visual attention known as line of sight (LoS), are important tasks of REGT systems. In this paper, we present a comparative evaluation of REGT systems intended for the PoG and LoS estimation tasks regarding past to recent progress. Our literature evaluation presents promising insights on key concepts and changes recorded over time in hardware setup, software process, application, and deployment of REGT systems. In addition, we present current issues in REGT research for future attempts.

Remote eye-gaze tracking method robust to the device rotation

A remote eye-gaze tracking (REGT) method is presented, which compensates for the error caused by device rotation. The proposed method is based on the state-of-the-art homography normalization (HN) method. Conventional REGT methods, including the HN method, suffer from a large estimation error in the presence of device rotation. However, little effort has been made to clarify the relation between the device rotation and its subsequent error. This paper introduces two factors inducing device rotation error, the discrepancy between the optical and visual axis, called angle kappa, and the change in camera location. On the basis of these factors, an efficient method for compensating for the REGT error is proposed. While the device undergoes a 360-deg rotation, a series of erroneous points of gaze (POGs) are obtained on the screen and modeled as an ellipse, and then the center of the ellipse is exploited to estimate the rotation-invariant POG. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed REGT method can estimate the POG accurately in spite of the rotational movement of the device.

A novel single IR light based gaze estimation method using virtual glints

Among various infrared (IR) image based remote eye gaze tracking (REGT) methods, 2-D interpolation based methods, e.g., the cross ratio-based and homography normalization (HN)-based methods, have been widely researched owing to their highly accurate performance and simplicity with respect to hardware setup. These methods, however, can be employed only when user utilizes more than four IR light sources to obtain multiple corneal reflections projected on the image plane, i.e. glints. In this paper, a novel 2-D interpolation-based REGT method with a single IR light source is proposed, which attains both accuracy and headpose robustness. In the proposed method, the virtual glint (VG), which can substitute for the actual glint, is first estimated by utilizing the mathematical and geometrical principles established between the 3-D location of an IR light source and the corresponding glint in the image plane, and then the point of gaze (POG) is calculated by employing the HN method using the estimated VGs. The experimental results indicate that the proposed REGT method is highly competitive with conventional ones requiring multiple IR light sources, in terms of accuracy and robustness against head movements.

Improving the usability of remote eye gaze tracking for human-device interaction

This paper presents a novel single-point calibration-based remote eye gaze tracking (REGT) method. The proposed method consists primarily of two steps. First, a user calibration database (UCDB) that contains user-specific data associated with multiple calibration points (CPs) is constructed for a certain number of users. Second, for new users, the candidate calibrated data are retrieved from the UCDB by simply requesting the users to look at a single CP on the screen center (SC). Experimental results show that the proposed REGT method with single-point calibration demonstrates a highly competitive accuracy compared with conventional methods employing multipoint calibration.

A NOVEL INFRARED GAZE TRACKING SYSTEM BASED ON NONUNIFORM INTERPOLATION

The gaze tracking system has become an active research field for handicapped persons as well as general people in recent years. The precise mapping method plays an important role in the system. In this paper, a novel infrared gaze tracking system based on nonuniform interpolation is proposed. In this system, the eye images for the computer to analyze are extracted under two infrared light sources and a charge-coupled device camera, and the users do not require wearing any device. First, the integral projection algorithm and canny edge detection are applied to extract the pupil boundary points from the captured eye images, and then the pupil center is computed using an efficient and accurate ellipse-fitting algorithm. Finally, to estimate where the user looks, a novel mapping method based on the nonuniform interpolation algorithm is proposed. In this mapping method, the complicated geometric eyeball model and the nonlinear mapping between the pupil center coordinates and computer monitor screen coordinates do not need to be taken into account. Experimental results show that the proposed mapping method is simple, fast and more accurate. Moreover, our system is the remote eye gaze tracking system. The users do not need to wear any device, which make the users feel more comfortable.

Improving the Accuracy and Reliability of Remote System-Calibration-Free Eye-Gaze Tracking

Remote eye-gaze tracking provides a means for nonintrusive tracking of the point-of-gaze (POG) of a user. For application as a user interface for the disabled, a remote system that is noncontact, reliable, and permits head motion is very desirable. The system-calibration-free pupil-corneal reflection (P-CR) vector technique for POG estimation is a popular method due to its simplicity, however, accuracy has been shown to be degraded with head displacement. Model-based POG-estimation methods were developed, which improve system accuracy during head displacement, however, these methods require complex system calibration in addition to user calibration. In this paper, the use of multiple corneal reflections and point-pattern matching allows for a scaling correction of the P-CR vector for head displacements as well as an improvement in system robustness to corneal reflection distortion, leading to improved POG-estimation accuracy. To demonstrate the improvement in performance, the enhanced multiple corneal reflection P-CR method is compared to the monocular and binocular accuracy of the traditional single corneal reflection P-CR method, and a model-based method of POG estimation for various head displacements.

Eye gaze tracking techniques for interactive applications

This paper presents a review of eye gaze tracking technology and focuses on recent advancements that might facilitate its use in general computer applications. Early eye gaze tracking devices were appropriate for scientific exploration in controlled environments. Although it has been thought for long that they have the potential to become important computer input devices as well, the technology still lacks important usability requirements that hinders its applicability. We present a detailed description of the pupil–corneal reflection technique due to its claimed usability advantages, and show that this method is still not quite appropriate for general interactive applications. Finally, we present several recent techniques for remote eye gaze tracking with improved usability. These new solutions simplify or eliminate the calibration procedure and allow free head motion.