Small electronic tags enable gaze-based object detection without cameras
Camera-Free Object Discovery and Interaction with GazeTags
Human-Computer InteractionComputer Vision and Pattern RecognitionGraphicsMultimedia
Summary
People often use cameras to recognize objects they look at, but cameras can use a lot of battery power and raise privacy concerns. The authors created a tiny tag that you can stick on objects, which wakes up only when a special infrared light points at it from a device worn on the head. This lets the device know exactly which object you are looking at without needing a camera. The tags are cheap, use very little power, and can last more than a year on a small battery.
What this means in practice
- •For wearable device designers: Integrate low-power electronic tags and infrared emitters to enable continuous object awareness on smartglasses or hearables without cameras.$Commercial implications: Allows companies to build privacy-conscious smart wearable products with long battery life capable of recognizing objects by gaze.
- •For smart home appliance developers: Add inexpensive responsive tags to home objects to support user interaction through gaze-based identity recognition without visual cameras.
Authors
Vimal Mollyn, Chris Harrison
Abstract
We present GazeTags, a camera- and computer-vision-free approach for worn head-gaze object awareness. Our small electronic tags cost roughly \$2 each and can operate for more than a year on a coin cell battery. They work in concert with a user-worn device (smartglasses, hearables, etc.) that periodically emits a focused infrared signal aligned with the user's head direction. Only GazeTags within that narrow head-oriented beam wake and respond, providing their identity and optional payloads such as object state or live sensor readings. By avoiding cameras and computer vision pipelines, our approach is very energy efficient, able to operate continuously even in battery-constrained wearables, and sidesteps non-trivial privacy issues. We describe our hardware design, characterize our system performance and operating tradeoffs, and demonstrate how GazeTags can enable practical gaze-aware environments.