Active tracking of foveated feature clusters using affine structure

We describe a novel method of obtaining a fixation point on a moving object for a real-time gaze control system. The method makes use of a real-time implementation of a corner detector and tracker and reconstructs the image position of the desired fixation point from a cluster of corners detected on the object using the affine structure available from two or three views. The method is fast, reliable, viewpoint invariant, and insensitive to occlusion and/or individual corner dropout or reappearance. We compare two- and three-dimensional forms of the algorithm, present results for the method in use with a high performance head/eye platform, and compare the results with two naive fixation methods.