User interface control using gaze tracking

A system, comprising:

• a data processing apparatus;
• and
• a memory storage apparatus in data communication with the data processing apparatus, the memory storage apparatus storing instructions executable by the data processing apparatus and that upon such execution cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:
• receiving an image of a sequence of images, the image depicting a face of a user;
• for each particular facial feature point of a plurality of facial feature points of the face depicted in the image:
• comparing a template image for the particular facial feature point to one or more image portions of the image, the template image for the particular facial feature point including a portion of a previous image of the sequence of images that depicted the facial feature point;
• identifying, based on the comparison, a matching image portion of the image that matches the template image for the particular facial feature point;
• and
• identifying, in the image, a location of the matching image portion;
• and
• determining a direction in which the user is looking based on the identified location for each template image.

A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by a data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

• receiving an image of a sequence of images, the image depicting a face of a user;
• for each particular facial feature point of a plurality of facial feature points of the face depicted in the image:
• comparing a template image for the particular facial feature point to one or more image portions of the image, the template image for the particular facial feature point including a portion of a previous image of the sequence of images that depicted the facial feature point;
• identifying, based on the comparison, a matching image portion of the image that matches the template image for the particular facial feature point;
• and
• identifying, in the image, a location of the matching image portion;
• and
• determining a direction in which the user is looking based on the identified location for each template image.