Software-enabled Gaze-aware Videoconferencing

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.