Improving the robustness of gaze tracking under unconstrained illumination conditions

  • Kwang Hyun Uhm
  • , Mun Cheon Kang
  • , Joon Yeon Kim
  • , Sung Jea Ko*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In human-computer interaction (HCI) applications, the performance degradation of gaze trackers in real-world environments is a critical issue. Typically, gaze trackers utilize the pupil center and corneal reflection (CR) obtained from an infrared (IR) light source to estimate the point of regard (POR). However, false CRs are often generated due to extraneous light sources such as sunlight or lamps. In this study, we propose a method of improving the robustness of gaze tracking under unconstrained illumination conditions. First, the proposed method generates a coded CR pattern by utilizing time-multiplexed IR light sources. Next, the CR candidates are detected in eye images, and their coordinates are compensated based on the head and eye movements of the user. Finally, true CRs are selected from the motion-compensated CR candidates by utilizing a novel cost function. Experimental results indicate that the gaze-tracking performance of the proposed method under various light conditions is considerably better than those of the conventional methods.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)20603-20616
    Number of pages14
    JournalMultimedia Tools and Applications
    Volume79
    Issue number29-30
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020 Aug 1

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This work was supported by the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2014-3-00077, Development of global multi-target tracking and event prediction techniques based on real-time large-scale video analysis).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

    Keywords

    • Gaze tracking
    • Human computer interaction

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Software
    • Media Technology
    • Hardware and Architecture
    • Computer Networks and Communications

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