Device for measuring a retina reflected light amount and a gaze detecting apparatus using the same

Claim 1

An eye detecting apparatus comprising: at least three light sources located at three different positions and adapted for emitting infrared rays within the same light emitting range; image pick-up means corresponding to the respective light sources and mounted at the same positions as the respective light sources, the image pick-up means receiving the reflected infrared rays reflected from the pupil of a person's eye; reading means for reading each respective image pick-up means to provide an output representing pupil areas of images picked up by the image pick-up means; pupil line calculating means for calculating pupil lines extending between said pupil areas read by the reading means and each position of each image pick-up means; pupil position calculating means for obtaining the intersection of said calculated pupil lines to thereby provide a determination of the pupil position; integrating means for integrating the amount of light represented by signals which are generated by each of said image pick-up means and which are located at different positions of the read pupil area; storing means for storing characteristic light reflected by the retina relative to a displacement angle, said displacement angle being the angle between the direction of eye gaze and a line extending between the pupil and the image pick-up means; displacement angle calculating means for calculating displacement angles based on outputs of the integrating means and the retina reflected light amount stored in the storing means; and calculating means for calculating eye gaze based on the pupil position and the displacement angles.