Introducing the ITU GazeTracker

The ITU Gaze Tracker is an open-source eye gaze tracking application that aims to provide a low-cost alternative to commercial gaze tracking systems and thereby making the technology more accessible. It is being developed by the Gaze Group at the IT University of Copenhagen, supported by the Communication by Gaze Interaction Association (COGAIN). The eye tracking software is video-based, and any camera equipped with infrared nightvision can be used, such as a video camera or a webcam. The cameras that have been tested with the system can be found in our forum.

Features:

• Supports head mounted and remote setups
• Tracks both pupil and glints
• Supports a wide variety of camera devices
  
• Configurable calibration
• Eye-mouse capabilities
• UDPServer broadcasting gaze data
• Full source code provided
  

We encourage users and developers to test our software with their cameras and provide feedback so we can continue development. The ITU Gaze Tracker is released under the GLP3 open source license and the full source code is hosted at sourceforge. It´s written in C# using Emgu OpenCV wrapper for C++ image processing. (Microsoft .Net 3.5 needed) Once the tracker has been started it can be configured to broadcast gaze data via the UDP protocol which makes it easy to pick up in your own applications. We provide a sample implementation on a client in C#.

Open source eye tracking has never been easier. Download the binaries, plug the camera and launch the application. Adjust the sliders to match your camera and start the calibration.

Visit the ITU GazeGroup to download the software package. Please get in touch with us at http://forum.gazegroup.org

Radio interview with DR1

Thomas Behrndtz from the Danish Radio (DR1) came by the other day to do an interview on the upcoming ITU Gaze Interaction platform. It resulted in a five minute episode on the "Videnskaben kort", a radio program on interesting progress in science. Lately we have been working hard on the software package which is to be released at CHI09 in Boston next week. It includes a number of applications and tools that are to be released for free download including source code under the GPL licence. In short, these are exciting times for low-cost eye tracking and gaze interaction. Stay tuned..

Click on image to hear the radio interview (in Danish/Swedish)

The Argentinian myEye released

I have been following an interesting project taking place in Argentina during the last half year. Marcelo Laginestra have through his blog described the developments of a low-cost webcam based eye tracker. It has now been released for download, free of charge.

The system requirements are modest,

• CPU: 1.5 Ghz or higher
• RAM: 256 DDR RAM or higher (Recommendation 512 RAM)
• Space: at least 100MB hard disk space.
• Camera: 640x480 capture resolution or higher. (At least 30fps)
• O.S.: Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Go to the myEye website to download the software.

I am happy to see that the project came through, kudos for releasing under Creative Commons.

Keep an eye open for the ITU gaze interaction platform that will be released in conjunction with CHI09 in early April.

The Argentinian Eye Mouse software released (Amaro & Ponieman)

Nicolás Amaro and Nicolás Ponieman at the ORT Argentina, recently got the Chamber of Industry and Trade Argentine-German Award for Innovation 2008 for their work on a low-cost (webcam) headmounted corneal reflection based solution. Best of all the software can be downloaded which will directly benefit those who are in need but cannot afford the state-of-the-art systems currently on the market. As demonstrated by the video below it is capable of running grid-based interfaces, thus it should be adequate for GazeTalk and similar.

View on YouTube

An Unobtrusive Method for Gaze Tracking (N. Chitrik & Y. Schwartzburg)

Nava Chitrik and Yuliy Schwartzburg have in partial fulfillment of their Senior Design Project Requirements constructed a low-cost approach for remote eye tracking at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Electrical Engineering Department.

"The line of a person's gaze is known to have many important applications in artificial intelligence (AI) and video conferencing but determining where a user is looking is still a very challenging problem. Traditionally, gaze trackers have been implemented with devices worn around the user's head, but more recent advances in the field use unobtrusive methods, i.e. an external video camera, to obtain information about where a person is looking. We have developed a simplified gaze tracking system using a single camera and a single point source mounted compactly in the view of the user, a large simplification over previous methods which have used a plurality of each. Furthermore, our algorithms are robust enough to allow head motion and our image processing functions are designed to extract data even from low-resolution or noisy video streams. Our system also has the computational advantage of working with very small image sizes, reducing the amount of resources needed for gaze tracking, freeing them up for applications that might utilize this information.

To reiterate: The main differences between this implementation and similar implementations are that this system uses a histogram method as opposed to edge detection to work with very low resolution video extremely quickly. However, it requires an infrared camera and infrared LED's. (Which can be purchased for less than 25 dollars online.)"

View on YouTube