METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETECTING DIRECTION OF VISUAL AXIS AND MAN-MACHINE INTERFACE APPARATUS CONTAINING THE SAME

摘要

PURPOSE: To provide a means for direction of visual axis to allow detecting of the direction of human visual axis without mounting the apparatus on a head part, a screen controller using the same, and a multimodal interaction device. CONSTITUTION: An image is inputted from an image inputting section 2 and an edge of the image is extracted at an image processing section 3 to perform a processing such as density varying processing. The position of an eye is estimated in a face from an image of an edge acquired to obtain positional information on the iris of the eye from a variable density image. At a direction of visual axis judging section 4, the direction of visual axis is detected by comparing positional information each in the horizontal and vertical directions with a reference pattern.