A Human-Robot Interface Using Eye-Gaze Tracking System for People with Motor Disabilities

Recently, service area has been emerging field of robotic applications. Even though assis tant robots play an important role for the disabled and the elderly, they still suffer from operating the robots using conventional interface devices such as joysticks or keyboards. In this paper we propose an efficient computer interface using real-time eye-gaze tracking system. The inputs to the proposed system are images taken by a camera and data from a magnetic sensor. The measured data is sufficient to describe the eye and head movement because the camera and the receiver of a magnetic sensor are stationary with respect to the head. So the proposed system can obtain the eye-gaze direction in spite of head movement as long as the distance between the system and the transmitter of a magnetic position sensor is within 2m. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed system in practical aspect and also verify the feasibility of the system as a new computer interface for the disabled.