Eye-tracking systems have emerged as valuable tools in various research fields, including psychology, medicine, marketing, car safety, and advertising. However, the high costs of the necessary specialized hardware prevent the widespread adoption of these systems. Appearance-based gaze estimation techniques offer a cost-effective alternative that can rely solely on RGB cameras, albeit with reduced accuracy. Therefore, the aim of our work was to present a real-time eye-tracking system with low-end hardware that leverages appearance-based techniques while overcoming their drawbacks to make reliable gaze data accessible to more users. Our system employs fast and light machine learning algorithms from an external library called MediaPipe to identify 3D facial landmarks. Additionally, it uses a series of widely recognized computer vision techniques, like morphological transformations, to effectively track eye movements. The precision and accuracy of the developed system in recognizing saccades and fixations when the eye movements are mainly horizontal were tested through a quantitative comparison with the EyeLink 1000 Plus, a professional eye tracker. Based on the encouraging registered results, we think that it is possible to adopt the presented system as a tool to quickly retrieve reliable gaze information.

Eye-Tracking System with Low-End Hardware: Development and Evaluation / Iacobelli, E.; Ponzi, V.; Russo, S.; Napoli, C.. - In: INFORMATION. - ISSN 2078-2489. - 14:12(2023). [10.3390/info14120644]

Eye-Tracking System with Low-End Hardware: Development and Evaluation

Iacobelli E.
Co-primo
Investigation
;
Ponzi V.
Co-primo
Software
;
Russo S.
Co-primo
Conceptualization
;
Napoli C.
Ultimo
Supervision
2023

Abstract

Eye-tracking systems have emerged as valuable tools in various research fields, including psychology, medicine, marketing, car safety, and advertising. However, the high costs of the necessary specialized hardware prevent the widespread adoption of these systems. Appearance-based gaze estimation techniques offer a cost-effective alternative that can rely solely on RGB cameras, albeit with reduced accuracy. Therefore, the aim of our work was to present a real-time eye-tracking system with low-end hardware that leverages appearance-based techniques while overcoming their drawbacks to make reliable gaze data accessible to more users. Our system employs fast and light machine learning algorithms from an external library called MediaPipe to identify 3D facial landmarks. Additionally, it uses a series of widely recognized computer vision techniques, like morphological transformations, to effectively track eye movements. The precision and accuracy of the developed system in recognizing saccades and fixations when the eye movements are mainly horizontal were tested through a quantitative comparison with the EyeLink 1000 Plus, a professional eye tracker. Based on the encouraging registered results, we think that it is possible to adopt the presented system as a tool to quickly retrieve reliable gaze information.
2023
artificial intelligence; CNN; eye movements; eye tracking; machine learning; morphological transformations; visual attention
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Eye-Tracking System with Low-End Hardware: Development and Evaluation / Iacobelli, E.; Ponzi, V.; Russo, S.; Napoli, C.. - In: INFORMATION. - ISSN 2078-2489. - 14:12(2023). [10.3390/info14120644]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1698263
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