Read my Eyes, a presentation of the ITU Gaze Tracker
Posted by javiersanagustin in People on May 9, 2011
During the last month we’ve been working on a video that would allow us to introduce the ITU Gaze Tracker to a wider audience. The production has been carried out in collaboration with the Communication Department at the IT University of Copenhagen, and the result is our first “professional” video about the gaze tracker. Hope you like it!
Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications Conference
Posted by javiersanagustin in Applications, Conferences, Publications on April 28, 2011
A new conference on Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications will take place at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona (Sweden) on 26 and 27th of May (see conference page). The conference will focus on applications that make use of eye input and other biometric sensors, for instance games, eye-typing applications or social interaction applications. It will also explore new interaction methods using gaze interaction, and the challenges associated with eye tracking technology. The accepted papers will appear in the ACM Digital Library.
The two papers that we submitted were accepted for presentation in the conference. The title of the first paper is “Evaluation of a Remote Webcam-Based Eye Tracker”, and we conduct an exhaustive evaluation of the performance of the ITU Gaze Tracker in a remote setup and compare it to the Tobii T60 and the Mirametrix S1. In the second paper, “Gaze Interaction from Bed”, we explore how the ITU Gaze Tracker can be employed in a hospital scenario in which the patient interacts with an interface projected on a wall.
Update: papers now available
New camera interface implemented
Posted by javiersanagustin in Cameras, Development on April 26, 2011
Recently, Martin implemented a new camera interface in the ITU Gaze Tracker. This interface allows us to make all the code in the tracking library camera-independent, since now all camera-specific features are taken care of by the interface. It also makes it easier to add support for new cameras, so if you have a camera you would like to add support to (for example Point Grey cameras) and have some coding skills, feel free to give it a try!
The camera/device management has been extracted into a new namespace, GTHardware. When the Camera class is created it will check which devices are connected and initialize the device. Each device extends the CameraBase class which contains a set of methods that are required. The GTHarware.Camera contains a static singleton reference to the active camera which can be accessed through the Instance property.
Required methods
| Name | Description |
| Initialize | Prepares and initializes the camera, creates handle, allocates image memory etc |
| Start | Starts capture, raises OnImage event of type ImageEventArgs when a frame arrives |
| Stop | Stops capture |
| SetROI | Takes a System.Drawing.Rectangle and sets the Region of Interest on cameras supporting this, this is determined by fixed property IsSupportingROI |
| GetROI | Returns System.Drawing.Rectangle of the set ROI |
| ClearROI | Clears the Region of Interest |
| Cleanup | Disposes memory, closes handles and stops camera if running |
Required properties/events
| Type | Name | Description |
| int | Width | Gets the current (last) image width |
| int | Height | Gets the current (last) image height |
| int | DefaultWidth | Gets the width of the full frame image (non-roi) |
| int | DefaultHeight | Gets the height of the full frame image (non-roi) |
| int | FPS | Current Frames Per Second |
| bool | IsSupportingROI | False for DirectShow devices, true for some machine vision cameras |
| bool | IsROISet | Returns true if the Region of Interest has been set |
| bool | IsSettingROI | Returns true if the camera uses an asynchronous method to set Region of Interest and this operation has not completed yet |
| event | OnImage | Tracker subscribes to an event handler of type ImageEventArgs which is raised when a new frame arrives. It contains a Emgu/OpenCV image of type Image |
Edit: See the discussion on the forum that concerns adding new devices.
In-vehicle eye tracking using the ITU Gaze Tracker
Posted by javiersanagustin in Applications on March 3, 2011
Nicolas Schneider has developed a head-mounted system to be used in in-vehicle scenarios as part of his Master Thesis project. The system employs an eye-tracking camera and a scene camera to record what the user is seeing, both mounted on a pair of glasses. The eye tracking software is based on the ITU Gaze Tracker v1.6, which has been modified to work in this setting. The results and accuracy obtained are impressive. We hope that Nicolas will contribute his software as open source, which will enable other enthusiasts and researchers to continue the work.
10.000 downloads of the gaze tracker
Posted by javiersanagustin in Development on November 24, 2010
Yesterday, 23rd November, we reached the impressive amount of 10.000 downloads of the binaries of our open-source gaze tracker from SourceForge. This happens approximately one and a half years since we made our first release, back in April 2009. Furthermore, the trend shows an increase of downloads every month, which encourages us to continue the development of the software to add new features and make it as robust as possible.
As always, we welcome collaboration from everyone interested in giving back something to the community. This can take the form of an economic donation via PayPal so we can buy and test new hardware; helping in the development of the software and/or gaze-based applications; and writing guides explaining a custom setup in our forum.
We are very happy that more and more people have access to a traditionally expensive technology, and hope that the spread of the open-source eye tracker will lead to new applications and human-computer interaction paradigms in the near future. We encourage you to be a part of it.
Pushing the limits
Posted by martintall in Development on October 29, 2010
Pushing the limits, +500Hz remote monocular tracking at 60cm. Using aggressive settings demonstrate the capabilities of the GT2 tracking engine. A more practical configuration would be 300Hz which gives a little more room to move.
Gaze Tracker 2.0 Beta released
Posted by javiersanagustin in Development, Releases on October 28, 2010
We have released the first beta of the Gaze Tracker 2.0!
Download:
GazeTracker.2.0b.32-bit.zip
GazeTracker.2.0b.64-bit.zip (built on Win7 64bit)
Main changes:
- Automatic camera Region Of Interest setting based on detected features (only for the Thorlab camera)
- Repositioning of the ROI as the head moves around.
- Camera settings panel is now integrated in the main Settings panel.
- Calibration report now shows the accuracy in degrees. This is calculated using a default distance from user to screen of 60 cm; the value can be changed clicking on it.
- The visualization mode is selected in the main screen.
- New configuration panel to place the light sources according to the physical location. Users can select 1, 2 or 4 light sources (the code to detect 4 light sources is not implemented yet). The information regarding the location of the light sources is employed to improve the robustness of glint detection routines.
- Performance information (frames per second, CPU use, RAM use) when hovering over main screen.
- Many fixes in the calibration routines
- New sliders in the pupil and glint configuration, value can also be input typing the number.
- Fixes in the fixation detection, cursor position should be more stable now.
- More fixes I cannot remember now ^^
Screencast to configure the different parameters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75KRipM2W5c
We aim for a final 2.0 version before Christmas.
Discuss in our forum.
GT2.0 Demo/Screencast
Posted by martintall in Development on October 28, 2010
HD video available (click 360p and select 720p)
Performance counters
Posted by martintall in Development on October 26, 2010
The latest version now includes performance counters that keeps track on processor load, memory usage and tracking speed. If the processor or memory utilization is above 50% the numbers will turn red. If the actual tracking speed is less than 50% of the camera capture rate the fps number turns red. Simple and intuitive.
Component Placing
Posted by martintall in Development, IR Illumination, Tracking algorithms on October 21, 2010
The new 2.0 adds a feature to simplify the setup by a drag and drop interface to specify the physical placement of components. The information will then be used in the image processing routines to detect features matching the setup. The configuration window will automatically launch if no previous configuration exists.