Sunday, March 30, 2008

Neural Network Gaze Tracking using Web Camera

Using a simple low resolution web camera without IR illumination David Bäck uses a neural network approach for eye tracking. Low accuracy (2-4 deg.) mainly due to the poor image quality from the web camera and no IR illumination. However, a nice introduction to the basics of technical implementation.

Abstract
"Gaze tracking means to detect and follow the direction in which a person looks. This can be used in for instance human-computer interaction. Most existing systems illuminate the eye with IR-light, possibly damaging the eye. The motivation of this thesis is to develop a truly non-intrusive gaze tracking system, using only a digital camera, e.g. a web camera.

The approach is to detect and track different facial features, using varying image analysis techniques. These features will serve as inputs to a neural net, which will be trained with a set of predetermined gaze tracking series. The output is coordinates on the screen.

The evaluation is done with a measure of accuracy and the result is an average angular deviation of two to four degrees, depending on the quality of the image sequence. To get better and more robust results, a higher image quality from the digital camera is needed."

Download paper as pdf

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