Pupil-Canthi-Ratio: A Calibration-Free Method for Tracking Horizontal Gaze Direction

Yanxia Zhang, Andreas Bulling, Hans Gellersen

Proc. International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI), pp. 129-132, 2014.

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Abstract

Eye tracking is compelling for hands-free interaction with pervasive displays. However, most existing eye tracking systems require specialised hardware and explicit calibrations of equipment and individual users, which inhibit their widespread adoption. In this work, we present a light-weight and calibration-free gaze estimation method that leverages only an off-the-shelf camera to track users’ gaze horizontally. We introduce pupil-canthi-ratio (PCR), a novel measure for estimating gaze directions. By using the displacement vector between the inner eye corner and the pupil centre of an eye, PCR is calculated as the ratio of the displacement vectors from both eyes. We establish a mapping between PCR to gaze direction by Gaussian process regression, which inherently infers averted horizontal gaze directions of users. We present a study to identify the characteristics of PCR. The results show that PCR achieved an average accuracy of 3.9 degrees across different people. Finally, we show examples of real-time applications of PCR that allow users to interact with a display by moving only their eyes.

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