A single camera eye-gaze tracking system with free head motion

TLDR

Eye‑gaze offers a promising human‑machine interface, and non‑contact, accurate, and easy‑to‑use tracking devices can broaden its adoption. This paper introduces a system that meets these goals using a single high‑resolution camera with a fixed field of view. The camera‑only design has no moving parts, enabling rapid reacquisition, and supports free head motion through multiple glints and 3D modeling techniques. The system attains sub‑1° visual‑angle accuracy over a 14×12×20 cm field of view across diverse hardware, resolutions, and frame rates.

Abstract

Eye-gaze as a form of human machine interface holds great promise for improving the way we interact with machines. Eye-gaze tracking devices that are non-contact, non-restrictive, accurate and easy to use will increase the appeal for including eye-gaze information in future applications. The system we have developed and which we describe in this paper achieves these goals using a single high resolution camera with a fixed field of view. The single camera system has no moving parts which results in rapid reacquisition of the eye after loss of tracking. Free head motion is achieved using multiple glints and 3D modeling techniques. Accuracies of under 1° of visual angle are achieved over a field of view of 14x12x20 cm and over various hardware configurations, camera resolutions and frame rates.