Gaze Tracking and its Integration with Human-Robot Cooperation

Description

Gaze tracking as an eye monitoring method has found applications in various fields including marketing, automotive industry, rehabilitation, education, and virtual reality. In this project, we propose to extract human intentions from gaze tracking and integrate it as a kind of human-robot interface for robotic tasks. The project aims to develop a suitable head-mounted gaze tracking (HMGT) system and integrate it in human-robot cooperative tasks via communicating human intentions to the robot. We propose to approach the problem from different perspectives including (i) adopting a new regression-based model in the gaze estimation, (ii) developing flexible and automatic calibration for the gaze tracker, (iii) detecting human intention from the gaze tracking, (iv) introducing the human intention in human-robot cooperative tasks. With the fusion of gaze perception in robotic tasks, natural interactions between human and robots can be achieved. The challenging issues in the modeling and calibration methods for gaze tracking and human intention detection and integration in robot control need to be addressed in the project. A prototype of the integrated robotic system will also be developed for implementation of the proposed methodology. The results of the project will contribute the development of the technology and system to provide better robotic assistance to humans. As collaborations between robots and humans are becoming increasingly important for many robotic applications, this project will have significant impact on the theoretical studies in gaze tracking and gaze integrated human-robot interface, and the practical applications in robotics and automation. With the flexible and effective methodology to develop, the head-mounted gaze tracking device will be useful for interfacing humans with robots for advanced robotic tasks. This work will promote engineering applications of human-robot interaction technology in many areas, such as robot assisted rehabilitation, medical surgery, assisted driving and virtual reality.