Performance of a one-camera and a three-camera system

Report, 2010

Driving and operating a vehicle is to a great extent a visual task. In driver behaviour studies it is therefore important to be able to measure where the driver is looking. Today this can be done unobtrusively and remotely in real-time with camera based eye tracking. The most common remote eye tracking systems use multiple cameras in order to give satisfactory results. However, promising results using only one camera has recently emerged on the market. The main objective of this study is to compare eye tracking systems with one and three cameras, respectively, during various measurement conditions. A total of 53 participants were enrolled in the study. Data from the two eye trackers were acquired and analysed in terms of availability, accuracy and precision. The results indicate that both availability and accuracy are affected by many different factors. The most important factors are the number of cameras that is used and the angular distance from straight ahead. In the central region (straight ahead) both one-camera and three-camera systems have a high degree of accuracy and availability, but with increasing distance from the central region, the results deteriorate. This effect falls harder upon the one-camera system. Interestingly, there were no significant effects when wearing glasses in either availability or accuracy. There was however an interaction effect between distance and glasses. Advantages with a one-camera system are that it is cheaper, easier to operate and easier to install in a vehicle. A multi-camera system will, on the other hand, provide higher availability and accuracy for areas that are far from the road centre. A one-camera system is thus mostly suitable for in-vehicle applications such as systems that warn drivers for sleepiness or distraction while multi-camera solutions are preferable for research purposes.