A qualitative approach to classifying head and eye pose

The goal of this work is to classify the focus of attention of a subject who is switching his or her attention between a number of surrounding objects. The specific application is to classify, the focus of attention of a car driver as straightahead, towards the dashboard, or towards one of the mirrors. A quantitative approach to this problem requires (a) a priori information about the interior geometry of the car and the calibration of the camera, and (b) accurate computation of the subject's location and eye direction. This paper describes an alternative, qualitative, approach. The driver is observed over an extended period of time, and frequently occurring view directions are identified . Each of the frequent view directions is associated with its most likely target-dashboard, rear-view mirror etc. The head pose of the driver in any subsequent image is then classified by relating it to one of these labelled view directions. The head pose classification is augmented with a qualitative measurement of the eye pose.