Computer operation via face orientation

Computer operation via face orientation provides a means of communication for people with severe physical disability. The authors present a near-real-time computer system to track the eyes and the nose of a subject and compute the direction of the face. As presented by K. Ohmura et al. (1988), the direction can be computed from three natural feature points extracted from the face. The computational approach taken in this system is motivated by the practical requirements of near-real-time performance and accuracy. The approach is based on the reflection characteristic of the cornea. Any bright light source forms a twinkle in the eye that is fixed as long as the light source is fixed. Face direction detection is treated as a 2D tracking problem. The eye twinkles are extracted from the image and used to locate the nose. A final experiment shows that the face direction obtained from the three feature points is precise enough to control the mouse cursor to make selection from a menu with large light buttons