Detecting eye contact using wearable eye-tracking glasses

Abstract

We describe a system for detecting moments of eye contact between an adult and a child, based on a single pair of gaze-tracking glasses which are worn by the adult. Our method utilizes commercial gaze tracking technology to determine the adult's point of gaze, and combines this with computer vision analysis of video of the child's face to determine their gaze direction. Eye contact is then detected as the event of simultaneous, mutual looking at faces by the dyad. We report encouraging findings from an initial implementation and evaluation of this approach.