Multiple Low-cost Cameras for Effective Head and Gaze Tracking

In recent years several aids based on head or eye tracking appeared on the market. They facilitate people with limited speech capabilities, due to diseases such as the Motor Neuron Disease, to communicate. These systems implement applications on a Personal Computer (e.g., for typing words) by means of visual selection of the letters and extremely varied techniques are used for doing it. This article introduces a new system architecture that combines the potentials of head and eye tracking systems, to increase the versatility of the aid and to allow the disabled person to always use the same system throughout the life cycle of the illness. The applications that can be developed on this system are able to adapt to the precision that the user can reach. This allows a smooth transition between a more accurate system, such as a head tracker, to a more limited one, based on a pure eye tracker. Preliminary experimental results show the feasibility of combining head and eye tracking on a unified system.