Nonwearable gaze tracking system for controlling home appliance

Gaze-Guided Control of an Autonomous Mobile Robot Using Type-2 Fuzzy Logic

Motion control of mobile robots in a cluttered environment with obstacles is an important problem. It is unsatisfactory to control a robot’s motion using traditional control algorithms in a complex environment in real time. Gaze tracking technology has brought an important perspective to this issue. Gaze guided driving a vehicle based on eye movements supply significant features of nature task to realization. This paper presents an intelligent vision-based gaze guided robot control (GGC) platform that uses a user-computer interface based on gaze tracking enables a user to control the motion of a mobile robot using eyes gaze coordinate as inputs to the system. In this paper, an overhead camera, eyes tracking device, a differential drive mobile robot, vision and interval type-2 fuzzy inference (IT2FIS) tools are utilized. The methodology incorporates two basic behaviors; map generation and go-to-goal behavior. Go-to-goal behavior based on an IT2FIS is more soft and steady progress in data processing with uncertainties to generate better performance. The algorithms are implemented in the indoor environment with the presence of obstacles. Experiments and simulation results indicated that intelligent vision-based gaze guided robot control (GGC) system can be successfully applied and the IT2FIS can successfully make operator intention, modulate speed and direction accordingly.

Fuzzy System-Based Target Selection for a NIR Camera-Based Gaze Tracker

Gaze-based interaction (GBI) techniques have been a popular subject of research in the last few decades. Among other applications, GBI can be used by persons with disabilities to perform everyday tasks, as a game interface, and can play a pivotal role in the human computer interface (HCI) field. While gaze tracking systems have shown high accuracy in GBI, detecting a user’s gaze for target selection is a challenging problem that needs to be considered while using a gaze detection system. Past research has used the blinking of the eyes for this purpose as well as dwell time-based methods, but these techniques are either inconvenient for the user or requires a long time for target selection. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a method for fuzzy system-based target selection for near-infrared (NIR) camera-based gaze trackers. The results of experiments performed in addition to tests of the usability and on-screen keyboard use of the proposed method show that it is better than previous methods.

Compensation Method of Natural Head Movement for Gaze Tracking System Using an Ultrasonic Sensor for Distance Measurement

Most gaze tracking systems are based on the pupil center corneal reflection (PCCR) method using near infrared (NIR) illuminators. One advantage of the PCCR method is the high accuracy it achieves in gaze tracking because it compensates for the pupil center position based on the relative position of corneal specular reflection (SR). However, the PCCR method only works for user head movements within a limited range, and its performance is degraded by the natural movement of the user’s head. To overcome this problem, we propose a gaze tracking method using an ultrasonic sensor that is robust to the natural head movement of users. Experimental results demonstrate that with our compensation method the gaze tracking system is more robust to natural head movements compared to other systems without our method and commercial systems.

A new gaze estimation method considering external light

Gaze tracking systems usually utilize near-infrared (NIR) lights and NIR cameras, and the performance of such systems is mainly affected by external light sources that include NIR components. This is ascribed to the production of additional (imposter) corneal specular reflection (SR) caused by the external light, which makes it difficult to discriminate between the correct SR as caused by the NIR illuminator of the gaze tracking system and the imposter SR. To overcome this problem, a new method is proposed for determining the correct SR in the presence of external light based on the relationship between the corneal SR and the pupil movable area with the relative position of the pupil and the corneal SR. The experimental results showed that the proposed method makes the gaze tracking system robust to the existence of external light.