Electric wheelchair control using head pose free eye-gaze tracker

Abstract

This work presents a head-pose-free eye-gaze tracker which is used to control a wheelchair. An infrared light camera is set up on a head-mounted frame to capture the human eye images. The captured eye-images are interpreted into eye-gaze angles and the eye-blink action. The wheelchair is actuated by two DC motors and its movement is determined by the eye-gaze angles and the eye-blink action. The long enough eye-blink action switches the system on or off; and the eye-gaze angles make the wheelchair move or stop or turn to the corresponding direction. A 3D orientation sensor is attached to the eye-gaze tracker to take into account the head movement; therefore the accuracy of the system is not be affected when the user change his head position intentionally or unintentionally. The experiments evaluated the wheelchair’s performances by comparing with the manual keyboard control and tested the accuracy of the eye-gaze tracker control interface.