Model based 3D gaze estimation for provision of virtual eye contact

In recent years, video communication has received a rapidly increasing interest on the market. Still unsolved is the problem of eye contact. The conferee still needs to decide whether to look into the camera or directly to the screen. Recently, a solution to this problem was presented which is based on a real-time 3D modeling of the conferees [1]. In order to achieve direct eye contact the authors defined a virtual camera directly on the screen in the eyes of the remote conferee. This paper discusses the problem of adequately positioning this virtual camera. A new approach will be presented which performs an eye and gaze tracking directly on the real-time 3D model rather than on the 2D image. Our methods not only provides robust and highly accurate results but is also able to additionally measure the distance between the conferees eye and the display with high precision.