Visual perception tools for natural interaction - a gaze capture and tracking system

In this paper we present a vision system with the aim of building a perceptual tool in order to make machines aware of humans allowing natural interaction in human-machine communication. The system must satisfy interaction constraints and be non-intrusive. Such a real-time camera-based system is designed for gaze tracking from an image sequence of a human in front of a machine. Therefore we use a CCD camera, placed between the keyboard and the screen. The system detects the user´s presence, locates and then tracks the face, nose and both eyes. These operations are performed by combining image processing techniques and pattern recognition methods. The tracking process is based on a prediction-verification strategy using dynamic information of detection. The system continuously adapts its recognition parameters to take into account environment variations. Some results of recognition scores are also presented