Gaze-awareness for Videoconferencing: A Software Approach

  • Jim Gemmell ,
  • C. Lawrence Zitnick ,
  • Kentaro Toyama ,
  • Steven Seitz

IEEE Multimedia |

Many desktop videoconferencing systems are ineffective due to deficiencies in gaze awareness and sense of spatial relationship. Previous works employ special hardware to address these problems. Here, we describe a software-only approach. Heads and eyes in the video are tracked using computer-vision techniques, and the tracking information is transmitted along with the video stream. Receivers take the tracking information corresponding to the video and graphically place the head and eyes in a virtual 3D space such that gaze awareness and a sense of space are provided.