Gaze tracking system at a distance for controlling IPTV

Gaze tracking is used for detecting the position that a user is looking at. In this research, a new gaze-tracking system and method are proposed to control a large-screen TV at a distance. This research is novel in the following four ways as compared to previous work: First, this is the first system for gaze tracking on a large-screen TV at a distance. Second, in order to increase convenience, the user's eye is captured by a remote gaze-tracking camera not requiring a user to wear any device. Third, without the complicated calibrations among the screen, the camera and the eye coordinates, the gaze position on the TV screen is obtained by using a simple 2D method based on a geometric transform with pupil center and four cornea specular reflections. Fourth, by using a near-infrared (NIR) passing filter on the camera and NIR illuminators, the pupil region becomes distinctive in the input image irrespective of the change in the environmental visible light. Experimental results showed that the proposed system could be used as a new interface for controlling a TV with a 60-inch-wide screen (16:9).