Unobtrusive and pervasive video-based eye-gaze tracking

Eye-gaze tracking has long been considered a desktop technology that finds its use inside the traditional office setting, where the operating conditions may be controlled. Nonetheless, recent advancements in mobile technology and a growing interest in capturing natural human behaviour have motivated an emerging interest in tracking eye movements within unconstrained real-life conditions, referred to as pervasive eye-gaze tracking. This critical review focuses on emerging passive and unobtrusive video-based eye-gaze tracking methods in recent literature, with the aim to identify different research avenues that are being followed in response to the challenges of pervasive eye-gaze tracking. Different eye-gaze tracking approaches are discussed in order to bring out their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify any limitations, within the context of pervasive eye-gaze tracking, that have yet to be considered by the computer vision community.peer-reviewe

MistForm: adaptive shape changing fog screens

We present MistForm, a shape changing fog display that can support one or two users interacting with either 2D or 3D content. Mistform combines affordances from both shape changing interfaces and mid-air displays. For example, a concave display can maintain content in comfortable reach for a single user, while a convex shape can support several users engaged on individual tasks. MistForm also enables unique interaction possibilities by exploiting the synergies between shape changing interfaces and mid-air fog displays. For instance, moving the screen will affect the brightness and blurriness of the screen at specific locations around the display, creating spaces with similar (collaboration) or different visibility (personalized content). We describe the design of MistForm and analyse its inherent challenges, such as image distortion and uneven brightness on dynamic curved surfaces. We provide a machine learning approach to characterize the shape of the screen and a rendering algorithm to remove aberrations. We finally explore novel interactive possibilities and reflect on their potential and limitations

A Review and Analysis of Eye-Gaze Estimation Systems, Algorithms and Performance Evaluation Methods in Consumer Platforms

In this paper a review is presented of the research on eye gaze estimation techniques and applications, that has progressed in diverse ways over the past two decades. Several generic eye gaze use-cases are identified: desktop, TV, head-mounted, automotive and handheld devices. Analysis of the literature leads to the identification of several platform specific factors that influence gaze tracking accuracy. A key outcome from this review is the realization of a need to develop standardized methodologies for performance evaluation of gaze tracking systems and achieve consistency in their specification and comparative evaluation. To address this need, the concept of a methodological framework for practical evaluation of different gaze tracking systems is proposed.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, Accepted for publication in IEEE Access in July 201

Perceived Depth Control in Stereoscopic Cinematography

Despite the recent explosion of interest in the stereoscopic 3D (S3D) technology, the ultimate prevailing of the S3D medium is still significantly hindered by adverse effects regarding the S3D viewing discomfort. This thesis attempts to improve the S3D viewing experience by investigating perceived depth control methods in stereoscopic cinematography on desktop 3D displays. The main contributions of this work are: (1) A new method was developed to carry out human factors studies on identifying the practical limits of the 3D Comfort Zone on a given 3D display. Our results suggest that it is necessary for cinematographers to identify the specific limits of 3D Comfort Zone on the target 3D display as different 3D systems have different ranges for the 3D Comfort Zone. (2) A new dynamic depth mapping approach was proposed to improve the depth perception in stereoscopic cinematography. The results of a human-based experiment confirmed its advantages in controlling the perceived depth in viewing 3D motion pictures over the existing depth mapping methods. (3) The practicability of employing the Depth of Field (DoF) blur technique in S3D was also investigated. Our results indicate that applying the DoF blur simulation on stereoscopic content may not improve the S3D viewing experience without the real time information about what the viewer is looking at. Finally, a basic guideline for stereoscopic cinematography was introduced to summarise the new findings of this thesis alongside several well-known key factors in 3D cinematography. It is our assumption that this guideline will be of particular interest not only to 3D filmmaking but also to 3D gaming, sports broadcasting, and TV production

Visualization and Human-Machine Interaction

The digital age offers a lot of challenges in the eld of visualization. Visual imagery has been effectively used to communicate messages through the ages, to express both abstract and concrete ideas. Today, visualization has ever-expanding applications in science, engineering, education, medicine, entertainment and many other areas. Different areas of research contribute to the innovation in the eld of interactive visualization, such as data science, visual technology, Internet of things and many more. Among them, two areas of renowned importance are Augmented Reality and Visual Analytics. This thesis presents my research in the fields of visualization and human-machine interaction. The purpose of the proposed work is to investigate existing solutions in the area of Augmented Reality (AR) for maintenance. A smaller section of this thesis presents a minor research project on an equally important theme, Visual Analytics. Overall, the main goal is to identify the most important existing problems and then design and develop innovative solutions to address them. The maintenance application domain has been chosen since it is historically one of the first fields of application for Augmented Reality and it offers all the most common and important challenges that AR can arise, as described in chapter 2. Since one of the main problem in AR application deployment is reconfigurability of the application, a framework has been designed and developed that allows the user to create, deploy and update in real-time AR applications. Furthermore, the research focused on the problems related to hand-free interaction, thus investigating the area of speech-recognition interfaces and designing innovative solutions to address the problems of intuitiveness and robustness of the interface. On the other hand, the area of Visual Analytics has been investigated: among the different areas of research, multidimensional data visualization, similarly to AR, poses specific problems related to the interaction between the user and the machine. An analysis of the existing solutions has been carried out in order to identify their limitations and to point out possible improvements. Since this analysis delineates the scatterplot as a renowned visualization tool worthy of further research, different techniques for adapting its usage to multidimensional data are analyzed. A multidimensional scatterplot has been designed and developed in order to perform a comparison with another multidimensional visualization tool, the ScatterDice. The first chapters of my thesis describe my investigations in the area of Augmented Reality for maintenance. Chapter 1 provides definitions for the most important terms and an introduction to AR. The second chapter focuses on maintenance, depicting the motivations that led to choose this application domain. Moreover, the analysis concerning open problems and related works is described along with the methodology adopted to design and develop the proposed solutions. The third chapter illustrates how the adopted methodology has been applied in order to assess the problems described in the previous one. Chapter 4 describes the methodology adopted to carry out the tests and outlines the experimental results, whereas the fifth chapter illustrates the conclusions and points out possible future developments. Chapter 6 describes the analysis and research work performed in the eld of Visual Analytics, more specifically on multidimensional data visualizations. Overall, this thesis illustrates how the proposed solutions address common problems of visualization and human-machine interaction, such as interface de- sign, robustness of the interface and acceptance of new technology, whereas other problems are related to the specific research domain, such as pose tracking and reconfigurability of the procedure for the AR domain

Remote Visual Observation of Real Places Through Virtual Reality Headsets

Virtual Reality has always represented a fascinating yet powerful opportunity that has attracted studies and technology developments, especially since the latest release on the market of powerful high-resolution and wide field-of-view VR headsets. While the great potential of such VR systems is common and accepted knowledge, issues remain related to how to design systems and setups capable of fully exploiting the latest hardware advances. The aim of the proposed research is to study and understand how to increase the perceived level of realism and sense of presence when remotely observing real places through VR headset displays. Hence, to produce a set of guidelines that give directions to system designers about how to optimize the display-camera setup to enhance performance, focusing on remote visual observation of real places. The outcome of this investigation represents unique knowledge that is believed to be very beneficial for better VR headset designs towards improved remote observation systems. To achieve the proposed goal, this thesis presents a thorough investigation of existing literature and previous researches, which is carried out systematically to identify the most important factors ruling realism, depth perception, comfort, and sense of presence in VR headset observation. Once identified, these factors are further discussed and assessed through a series of experiments and usability studies, based on a predefined set of research questions. More specifically, the role of familiarity with the observed place, the role of the environment characteristics shown to the viewer, and the role of the display used for the remote observation of the virtual environment are further investigated. To gain more insights, two usability studies are proposed with the aim of defining guidelines and best practices. The main outcomes from the two studies demonstrate that test users can experience an enhanced realistic observation when natural features, higher resolution displays, natural illumination, and high image contrast are used in Mobile VR. In terms of comfort, simple scene layouts and relaxing environments are considered ideal to reduce visual fatigue and eye strain. Furthermore, sense of presence increases when observed environments induce strong emotions, and depth perception improves in VR when several monocular cues such as lights and shadows are combined with binocular depth cues. Based on these results, this investigation then presents a focused evaluation on the outcomes and introduces an innovative eye-adapted High Dynamic Range (HDR) approach, which the author believes to be of great improvement in the context of remote observation when combined with eye-tracked VR headsets. Within this purpose, a third user study is proposed to compare static HDR and eye-adapted HDR observation in VR, to assess that the latter can improve realism, depth perception, sense of presence, and in certain cases even comfort. Results from this last study confirmed the author expectations, proving that eye-adapted HDR and eye tracking should be used to achieve best visual performances for remote observation in modern VR systems

Proceedings of the 2011 Joint Workshop of Fraunhofer IOSB and Institute for Anthropomatics, Vision and Fusion Laboratory

This book is a collection of 15 reviewed technical reports summarizing the presentations at the 2011 Joint Workshop of Fraunhofer IOSB and Institute for Anthropomatics, Vision and Fusion Laboratory. The covered topics include image processing, optical signal processing, visual inspection, pattern recognition and classification, human-machine interaction, world and situation modeling, autonomous system localization and mapping, information fusion, and trust propagation in sensor networks

An empirical study on the visual cluster validation method with Fastmap

This paper presents an empirical study on the visual method for cluster validation based on the Fastmap projection. The visual cluster validation method attempts to tackle two clustering problems in data mining: to verify partitions of data created by a clustering algorithm; and to identify genuine clusters from data partitions. They are achieved through projecting objects and clusters by Fastmap to the 2D space and visually examining the results by humans. A Monte Carlo evaluation of the visual method was conducted. The validation results of the visual method were compared with the results of two internal statistical cluster validation indices, which shows that the visual method is in consistence with the statistical validation methods. This indicates that the visual cluster validation method is indeed effective and applicable to data mining applications.published_or_final_versio