Applications of eye-tracking devices aim to understand human activities and behaviors, improve human interactions with robots, and develop assistive technology in helping people with some communication disabilities. This paper proposes an algorithm to detect the pupil center and user’s gaze direction in real-time, using a low-resolution webcam and a conventional computer with no need for calibration. Given the constraints, the gaze space was reduced to five states: left, right, center, up, and eyes closed. A pre-existing landmarks detector was used to identify the user’s eyes. We employ image processing techniques to find the center of the pupil and we use the coordinates of the points found associated with mathematical calculations to classify the gaze direction. By using this method, the algorithm achieved 81.9% overall accuracy results even under variable and non-uniform environmental conditions. We also performed quantitative experiments with noise, blur, illumination, and rotation variation. Smart Eye Communicator, the proposed algorithm, can be used as eye-tracking mechanism to help people with communication difficulties to express their desires.
Eye tracking is a tool presented in many applications ranging from scientific research to commercial applications. One of them is assistive technologies that aim to help people with some disabilities, including communication. However, the applications usually require specific hardware components or a high computational cost. This work proposes the Smart Eye Communicator II (SEC-II), an evolution of a previously presented algorithm to detect the pupil center and the user's gaze direction in real-time, using a low-resolution webcam and a conventional computer without a need for calibration. In SEC-II, a face aligner, which gets a canonical face alignment based on translation, scale, and rotation, has been added to the system. Likewise, strategies using eye coordinates were implemented to find the dominant the algorithm eye. By implementing these new approaches, achieved 86% accuracy, even under variable and non-uniform environmental conditions. Moreover, a graphical interface was implemented connecting the SEC-II to the internet and allowing users to express their desires and watch online videos chosen by themselves.
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