HMI uses human eye to control robot-mounted cameras

The system uses advanced eye-tracking technology combined with fast piezoelectric actuators connected to an ‘artificial eye’.

‘We have a human operator who sees what the robot sees — he can control the head and eyes of the robot with his own head and eyes, and can interact through the robot in a kind of Wizard of Oz experience, sitting inside the robot,’ said Stefan Kohlbecher of the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich.

The current project stems from work done in 2008, where the team created a head-mounted eye-tracking system that feeds into and instructs the direction of a centre-mounted camera. Thus, wherever the wearer’s eyes look, the camera follows.

This in itself was a considerable challenge, however, as commercially available eye-tracking technology can usually record to a frequency of no more than 60Hz, which would create a slow, jumpy output. The team developed a mobile system that tracks eyes’ movements in three dimensions with a frequency of 600Hz using infrared detectors coupled with a mirror that reflects infrared wavelengths but lets visible light through.