Gaze Controlled Driving

This is the paper on using eye trackers for remote robot navigation I had accepted for the CHI09 conference. It has now appeared on the ACM website. Note that the webcam tracker referred to in the paper is the ITU Gaze Tracker in an earlier incarnation. The main issue while using it is that head movements affect the gaze position and creates an offset. This is easier to correct and counterbalance on a static background than moving image (while driving!)

Abstract

"We investigate if the gaze (point of regard) can control a remote vehicle driving on a racing track. Five different input devices (on-screen buttons, mouse-pointing low-cost webcam eye tracker and two commercial eye tracking systems) provide heading and speed control on the scene view transmitted from the moving robot. Gaze control was found to be similar to mouse control. This suggests that robots and wheelchairs may be controlled ―hands-free‖ through gaze. Low precision gaze tracking and image transmission delays had noticeable effect on performance."

• Tall, M., Alapetite, A., San Agustin, J., Skovsgaard, H. H., Hansen, J. P., Hansen, D. W., and Møllenbach, E. 2009. Gaze-controlled driving. In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, MA, USA, April 04 - 09, 2009). CHI EA '09. ACM, New York, NY, 4387-4392. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1520340.1520671