Nvidia develops lightweight VR gaze tracking system using LED sensors

All of the world’s top virtual reality headset makers agree that gaze tracking is going to be fundamental to the next generation of VR hardware, as the ability to sense an eye’s position in real time enables a computer to optimize detail rendering, and even offer cursor controls without the need for hand or head movements. But gaze tracking hardware currently is neither cheap nor small, so researchers at Nvidia have come up with a novel solution that could enable the technology to become more widespread.

Nvidia’s new gaze tracker uses a capability of common LEDs — their ability to both emit and sense light — to simplify the process of determining the eye’s position relative to a display. Like other gaze tracking systems, the Nvidia system uses a ring of infrared LEDs to project unseen light into the eye, but here, LEDs also are used for color-selective sensing from the same location. This enables the smallest and lowest-cost gaze tracking yet developed, the researchers note, while matching the accuracy and sampling rates of today’s most common solutions.