A system and method for eye gaze tracking without calibrated cameras, direct measurements of specific users’ eye geometries, or requiring the user to visually track a cursor traversing a known trajectory. The preferred embodiment includes two uncalibrated cameras imaging the user’s eye and haying on-axis lighting. The cameras capture images of a test pattern in real space as reflected from the user’s cornea, which is essentially a convex spherical mirror. The invention then extracts parameters required to define a mathematical mapping between real space and image space, including spherical and perspective transformations. The invention processes subsequent images of objects reflected from the user’s eye through the inverse of the mathematical mapping to determine a gaze vector and a point of regard. Alternately, a single calibrated camera may be employed with means for estimating the eye-to-camera distance. A head-mounted embodiment that may include a laser pointer is also described.
BibTeX
@misc{Amir:Patent2003,
title = {System and method for eye gaze tracking using corneal image mapping},
author = {Arnon Amir and Myron D. Flickner and David B. Koons and Carlos H. Morimoto},
url = {http://www.google.com/patents/US6659611},
year = {2003},
month = {December},
note = {US Patent 6,659,611}
}