Enhanced gaze interaction using simple head gestures

We propose a combination of gaze pointing and head gestures for enhanced hands-free interaction. Instead of the traditional dwell-time selection method, we experimented with five simple head gestures: nodding, turning left/right, and tilting left/right. The gestures were detected from the eye-tracking data by a range-based algorithm, which was found accurate enough in recognizing nodding and leftdirected gestures. The gaze estimation accuracy did not noticeably suffer from the quick head motions. Participants pointed to nodding as the best gesture for occasional selections tasks and rated the other gestures as promising methods for navigation (turning) and functional mode switching (tilting). In general, dwell time works well for repeated tasks such as eye typing. However, considering multimodal games or transient interactions in pervasive and mobile environments, we believe a combination of gaze and head interaction could potentially provide a natural and more accurate interaction method.