Limbus/pupil switching for wearable eye tracking under variable lighting conditions

ABSTRACT

We present a low-cost wearable eye tracker built from off-the-shelf components. Based on the open source openEyes project (the only other similar effort that we are aware of), our eye tracker operates in the visible spectrum and variable lighting conditions. The novelty of our approach rests in automatically switching between tracking the pupil/iris boundary in bright light to tracking the iris/sclera boundary (limbus) in dim light. Additional improvements include a semi-automatic procedure for calibrating the eye and scene cameras, as well as an automatic procedure for initializing the location of the pupil in the first image frame. The system is accurate to two degrees visual angle in both indoor and outdoor environments.

REFERENCES

• 1: Jason S. Babcock , Jeff B. Pelz, Building a lightweight eyetracking headgear, Proceedings of the 2004 symposium on Eye tracking research & applications, p.109-114, March 22-24, 2004, San Antonio, Texas [doi>10.1145/968363.968386]
• 2: S. Birchfield, Elliptical Head Tracking Using Intensity Gradients and Color Histograms, Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, p.232, June 23-25, 1998
• 3: Gunilla Borgefors, Hierarchical Chamfer Matching: A Parametric Edge Matching Algorithm, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, v.10 n.6, p.849-865, November 1988 [doi>10.1109/34.9107]
• 4: John Canny, Finding Edges and Lines in Images, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1983
• 5: Martin A. Fischler , Robert C. Bolles, Random sample consensus: a paradigm for model fitting with applications to image analysis and automated cartography, Communications of the ACM, v.24 n.6, p.381-395, June 1981 [doi>10.1145/358669.358692]
• 6: Andrew Fitzgibbon , Maurizio Pilu , Robert B. Fisher, Direct Least Square Fitting of Ellipses, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, v.21 n.5, p.476-480, May 1999 [doi>10.1109/34.765658]
• 7: Gavrila, D. M. and Philomin, V. 1999. Real-Time Object Detection for "Smart" Vehicles. In International Conference on Computer Vision. 87--93.
• 8: Craig Hennessey , Borna Noureddin , Peter Lawrence, A single camera eye-gaze tracking system with free head motion, Proceedings of the 2006 symposium on Eye tracking research & applications, March 27-29, 2006, San Diego, California [doi>10.1145/1117309.1117349]
• 9: Dongheng Li , Jason Babcock , Derrick J. Parkhurst, openEyes: a low-cost head-mounted eye-tracking solution, Proceedings of the 2006 symposium on Eye tracking research & applications, March 27-29, 2006, San Diego, California [doi>10.1145/1117309.1117350]
• 10: Li, D. and Parkhurst, D. 2006. Open-Source Software for Real-Time Visible-Spectrum Eye Tracking. In Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN). COGAIN, Turin, Italy, 18--20. URL: <http://www.cogain.org/cogain2006/-COGAIN2006_Proceedings.pdf>.
• 11: Dongheng Li , David Winfield , Derrick J. Parkhurst, Starburst: A hybrid algorithm for video-based eye tracking combining feature-based and model-based approaches, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Workshops, p.79, June 20-26, 2005 [doi>10.1109/CVPR.2005.531]
• 12: Carlos H. Morimoto , Marcio R. M. Mimica, Eye gaze tracking techniques for interactive applications, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, v.98 n.1, p.4-24, April 2005 [doi>10.1016/j.cviu.2004.07.010]
• 13: Jeff B. Pelz , Roxanne Canosa , Jason Babcock, Extended tasks elicit complex eye movement patterns, Proceedings of the 2000 symposium on Eye tracking research & applications, p.37-43, November 06-08, 2000, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, United States [doi>10.1145/355017.355023]
• 14: Sid Reich , Les Goldberg , Stephen Hudek, Deja view camwear model 100, Proceedings of the the 1st ACM workshop on Continuous archival and retrieval of personal experiences, October 15-15, 2004, New York, New York, USA [doi>10.1145/1026653.1026672]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.6 Methodology and Techniques
          Subjects: Ergonomics

Additional Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.4 SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
      Subjects: Psychology

Keywords:
limbus tracking, wearable eye tracking