Camera-Free Object Discovery and Interaction with GazeTags

Abstract

We present GazeTags, a camera- and computer-vision-free approach for worn head-gaze object awareness. Our small electronic tags cost roughly $2 each and can operate for more than a year on a coin cell battery. They work in concert with a user-worn device (smartglasses, hearables, etc.) that periodically emits a focused infrared signal aligned with the user’s head direction. Only GazeTags within that narrow head-oriented beam wake and respond, providing their identity and optional payloads such as object state or live sensor readings. By avoiding cameras and computer vision pipelines, our approach is very energy efficient, able to operate continuously even in battery-constrained wearables, and sidesteps non-trivial privacy issues. We describe our hardware design, characterize our system performance and operating tradeoffs, and demonstrate how GazeTags can enable practical gaze-aware environments.