Improving Performance of the Human Pupil Orbit Model (HPOM) Estimation Method for Eye-Gaze Tracking

Eye-gaze direction-tracking technology is used in fields such as medicine, education, engineering, and gaming. Stability, accuracy, and precision of eye-gaze direction-tracking are demanded with simultaneous upgrades in response speed. In this study, a method is proposed to improve the speed with decreases in the system load and precision in the human pupil orbit model (HPOM) estimation method. The new method was proposed based on the phenomenon that the minor axis of the elliptical-deformed pupil always pointed toward the rotational center presented in various eye-gaze direction detection studies and HPOM estimation methods. Simulation experimental results confirmed that the speed was improved by at least 74 times by consuming less than 7 ms compared to the HPOM estimation. The accuracy of the eye’s ocular rotational center point showed a maximum error of approximately 0.2 pixels on the x-axis and approximately 8 pixels on the y-axis. The precision of the proposed method was 0.0 pixels when the number of estimation samples (ES) was 7 or less, which showed results consistent with those of the HPOM estimation studies. However, the proposed method was judged to work conservatively against the allowable angle error (AAE), considering that the experiment was conducted under the worst conditions and the cost used to estimate the final model. Therefore, the proposed method could estimate HPOM with high accuracy and precision through AAE adjustment according to system performance and the usage environment.