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

Factors that influence visual attention and their effects on safety in driving: an eye movement tracking approach

Statistics show that a high percentage of road related accidents are due to factors that cause impaired driving. Since information extraction in driving is predominantly a visual task, visual distraction and its implications are therefore important safety issues. The main objective of this research is to study some of the implications of demands to human’s attention and perception and how it affects performance of tasks such as driving. Specifically, the study aims to determine the changes that occur in the visual behavior of drivers with different levels of driving experience by tracking the movement of the eye; examine the effects of different levels of task complexity on visual fixation strategies and visual stimulus recognition; investigate the effects of secondary task on attentional and visual focus and its impact on driving performance; and evaluate the implications of the use of information technology device (cellular phone) while driving on road safety. Thirty-eight students participated in the study consisting of two experiments. In the first experiment, the participants performed two driving sessions while wearing a head mounted eye tracking device. The second experiment involved driving while engaging in a cellular phone conversation. Fixation location, frequency, duration and saccadic path, were used to analyze eye movements. The study shows that differences in visual behavior of drivers exist; wherein drivers with infrequent driving per week fixated more on the dashboard area than on the front view (F(3,26) = 3.53, p\u3c0.05), in contrast to the driver with more frequent use of vehicle per week where higher fixations were recorded in the front/center view (F(3,26) = 4.26). The degree of visual distraction contributes to the deterioration of driving resulting to 55% more driving errors committed. Higher time where no fixation was detected was observed when driving with distraction (from 96% to 91% for drivers with less frequency of vehicle use and 55% to 44% for drivers with more frequent use of vehicle). The number of pre-identified errors committed increased from 64 to 81, due to the effect of visual tunneling. This research presents objective data that strengthens the argument on the detrimental effects of distraction in driving

Pervasive and standalone computing: The perceptual effects of variable multimedia quality.

The introduction of multimedia on pervasive and mobile communication devices raises a number of perceptual quality issues, however, limited work has been done examining the 3-way interaction between use of equipment, quality of perception and quality of service. Our work measures levels of informational transfer (objective) and user satisfaction (subjective)when users are presented with multimedia video clips at three different frame rates, using four different display devices, simulating variation in participant mobility. Our results will show that variation in frame-rate does not impact a user’s level of information assimilation, however, does impact a users’ perception of multimedia video ‘quality’. Additionally, increased visual immersion can be used to increase transfer of video information, but can negatively affect the users’ perception of ‘quality’. Finally, we illustrate the significant affect of clip-content on the transfer of video, audio and textual information, placing into doubt the use of purely objective quality definitions when considering multimedia presentations

A Review of Driver Gaze Estimation and Application in Gaze Behavior Understanding

Driver gaze plays an important role in different gaze-based applications such as driver attentiveness detection, visual distraction detection, gaze behavior understanding, and building driver assistance system. The main objective of this study is to perform a comprehensive summary of driver gaze fundamentals, methods to estimate driver gaze, and it's applications in real world driving scenarios. We first discuss the fundamentals related to driver gaze, involving head-mounted and remote setup based gaze estimation and the terminologies used for each of these data collection methods. Next, we list out the existing benchmark driver gaze datasets, highlighting the collection methodology and the equipment used for such data collection. This is followed by a discussion of the algorithms used for driver gaze estimation, which primarily involves traditional machine learning and deep learning based techniques. The estimated driver gaze is then used for understanding gaze behavior while maneuvering through intersections, on-ramps, off-ramps, lane changing, and determining the effect of roadside advertising structures. Finally, we have discussed the limitations in the existing literature, challenges, and the future scope in driver gaze estimation and gaze-based applications

Assessing the variation of driver distraction with experience

Driver distraction has been a major concern in highway safety. Driver distraction is related to crashes and crash rate varies with age. Driving experience obviously increases with age. The purpose of this study is to determine the relation between driver experience and distraction. The study measures the distraction levels of various drivers and assesses the variation in distraction based on experience and also gender.;Distraction was defined as looking away from the center of the roadway for more than 2 seconds. Factors like distraction duration, percent time spent looking at the center of roadway and number of glances away from the center were considered in the analysis. The distraction factors were measured using a faceLAB eye tracking system. A statistical analysis was carried to test the significance of the variation. No significant statistical difference was observed in the percent time spent at the center of roadway and the number of glances away from the center based on driver experience and gender. A statistically significant difference was observed in the number of glances made by each group of drivers. Experienced drivers made more glances away from the center compared to less experienced drivers and the number was higher for female drivers than male drivers.;The analysis leads to conclusion that though the distraction level does not vary by experience, more experienced drivers exhibit better scanning of the roadway environment. No difference was observed in the distraction between male and female drivers. However, female drivers exhibited better scanning patterns than male drivers in the absence of additional distracting factors

The role of visual information in the steering behaviour of young and adult bicyclists

In a first series of experiments, the visual behaviour during different steering tasks, and under different constraints, was investigated in an indoor environment. Young learner, and experienced adult bicyclists were asked to steer through narrow lanes, a curved lane, and a slalom. Participants directed their gaze to the future path about one to two seconds ahead, and moved forward using optokinetic nystagmus-like eye movements. Both cycling speed and task demand were found to affect the visual behaviour of bicyclists. Although these shifts of visual attention were in line with earlier findings in pedestrians and car drivers, they did not seem to be entirely in line with the two-level model of steering behaviour. Therefore, a redefined version of this model was proposed as the ‘gaze constraints model for steering’. During a simple linear steering task, the visual behaviour of children (between 6 and 12 years of age) was similar to that of adults. However, in a more demanding slalom task children adopted a different visual-motor strategy. Whereas adults made more use of anticipatory fixations and often looked at the functional space between two cones, children mainly focussed on the upcoming cone. These findings suggest that adults plan their route through the slalom whereas children focus on steering around one cone at the time. In a second series of experiments, the distribution of visual attention was investigated in an actual traffic environment and the influence of a low quality cycling track on visual behaviour was studied. Results showed that children direct their gaze more to the environment and less to the path than adults. However, both adults and children made an apparent shift of visual attention from distant environmental regions towards more proximate road properties on the low quality cycling track. In general, the current thesis provides insights into how visual attention of young and adult bicyclists is distributed during different steering tasks and how this is affected by individual, task, and environmental constraints. Based on the current results, a gaze constraints model for steering was proposed. Furthermore, it seems that children adapted their visual behaviour to their limited capabilities, but that children’s visual behaviour changes in a similar way to changing task constraints as the visual behaviour of adults. These findings suggest that traffic rules, road infrastructure and traffic education should take into account the limited capabilities of children. However, it should be noted that this work only focussed on the lane-keeping task. Future research should therefore study the integration of these findings in the visual control of other traffic tasks such as hazard perception. A better understanding of the development of information processing of young learner bicyclists could potentially lead to better traffic education and more appropriate road infrastructure. Additionally, a new fixation-by-fixation analysis method to analyze head-mounted eye tracking data was tested in this thesis. This method was found to be a good alternative to the time-consuming frame-by-frame method, provided that the areas of interest were large, and the analysis is done over an extended period of time

Human-Centric Detection and Mitigation Approach for Various Levels of Cell Phone-Based Driver Distractions

abstract: Driving a vehicle is a complex task that typically requires several physical interactions and mental tasks. Inattentive driving takes a driver’s attention away from the primary task of driving, which can endanger the safety of driver, passenger(s), as well as pedestrians. According to several traffic safety administration organizations, distracted and inattentive driving are the primary causes of vehicle crashes or near crashes. In this research, a novel approach to detect and mitigate various levels of driving distractions is proposed. This novel approach consists of two main phases: i.) Proposing a system to detect various levels of driver distractions (low, medium, and high) using a machine learning techniques. ii.) Mitigating the effects of driver distractions through the integration of the distracted driving detection algorithm and the existing vehicle safety systems. In phase- 1, vehicle data were collected from an advanced driving simulator and a visual based sensor (webcam) for face monitoring. In addition, data were processed using a machine learning algorithm and a head pose analysis package in MATLAB. Then the model was trained and validated to detect different human operator distraction levels. In phase 2, the detected level of distraction, time to collision (TTC), lane position (LP), and steering entropy (SE) were used as an input to feed the vehicle safety controller that provides an appropriate action to maintain and/or mitigate vehicle safety status. The integrated detection algorithm and vehicle safety controller were then prototyped using MATLAB/SIMULINK for validation. A complete vehicle power train model including the driver’s interaction was replicated, and the outcome from the detection algorithm was fed into the vehicle safety controller. The results show that the vehicle safety system controller reacted and mitigated the vehicle safety status-in closed loop real-time fashion. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is efficient, accurate, and adaptable to dynamic changes resulting from the driver, as well as the vehicle system. This novel approach was applied in order to mitigate the impact of visual and cognitive distractions on the driver performance.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Applied Psychology 201

Eye-tracking assistive technologies for individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS, is a progressive nervous system disorder that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, resulting in the loss of muscle control. For individuals with ALS, where mobility is limited to the movement of the eyes, the use of eye-tracking-based applications can be applied to achieve some basic tasks with certain digital interfaces. This paper presents a review of existing eye-tracking software and hardware through which eye-tracking their application is sketched as an assistive technology to cope with ALS. Eye-tracking also provides a suitable alternative as control of game elements. Furthermore, artificial intelligence has been utilized to improve eye-tracking technology with significant improvement in calibration and accuracy. Gaps in literature are highlighted in the study to offer a direction for future research