hEYEbrid

We introduce hEYEbrid, a calibration-free method for spontaneous and long-term eye gaze tracking, with competitive gaze estimation. It is based on a hybrid concept that combines infrared eye images with corneal imaging. For this, two eye cameras are mounted on a glasses frame. In this way, the pupil can be tracked quickly with high precision. This information is translated into the corneal image, which is used to create a connection to the environment, acting like a scene camera. In a user study with 20 participants, we evaluated our approach against an extended version of the system, called 3C-hEYEbrid, and a state-of-the-art head-mounted Pupil Labs eye tracker. We show that hEYEbrid provides accurate gaze estimation in unconstrained environments and is robust against calibration drift (e.g. caused by taking off and putting on the device). In addition, we present a mobile and wearable implementation of hEYEbrid and 3C-hEYEbrid, that is also usable with a monocular Pupil Labs eye tracker. It connects the head-mounted device to a mobile phone, enabling gaze estimation in real time. hEYEbrid represents a significant step towards pervasive gaze-based interfaces.