Always-on egocentric cameras are increasingly used as demonstrations for embodied robotics, imitation learning, and assistive AR, but the resulting video streams are dominated by redundant and low-quality frames. Under the storage and battery constraints of wearable devices, choosing which frames to keep is as important as how to learn from them. We observe that modern eye-tracking headsets provide a continuous, training-free side channel that decomposes into two complementary axes: gaze fixation captures visual stability (quality), while pupil response captures arousal-linked moments (novelty). We operationalize this insight as a Dual-Criterion Frame Curator that first gates frames by gaze quality and then ranks the survivors by pupil-derived novelty. On the Visual Experience Dataset (VEDB), curated frames at 10% budget match the classification performance of the full stream, and naive signal fusion consistently destroys both contributions. The benefit is task-dependent: pupil ranking improves activity recognition, while gaze-only selection already dominates for scene recognition, confirming that the two signals serve genuinely different roles. Our method requires no model inference and operates at capture time, offering a path toward efficient, always-on egocentric data curation.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Quality–Novelty Decomposition. (a) Gaze confidence (x) captures stability; pupil response (y) captures novelty. Random includes junk; gaze-only yields clean but redundant frames; dual targets high stability and novelty. (b) Two-stage pipeline: gaze gate (top 75%) → pupil ranking within budget.
Strategy
Stage 1 (Gate)
Stage 2 (Rank)
Role
Random
—
Uniform random
Baseline
Gaze-only
—
Rank by g(t)
Quality baseline
Pupil-abs
—
Rank by ∣p(t)∣
Novelty baseline
Combined
—
0.5g+0.5∣p∣
Naive fusion
Dual
Top 75% by g(t)
Rank by ∣p(t)∣
Proposed
Gate+Random
Top 75% by g(t)
Uniform random
Ablation
Table 1: Frame selection strategies. Gate+Random is the ablation control that isolates the contribution of pupil ranking.
Figure 2: Correlation between physiological signals and DINOv2 feature change. (a) Pupil derivative ∣dp/dt∣ is positively correlated with feature change at all lags (mean ρ=+0.038 ). (b) Gaze quality g(t) is negatively correlated ( ρ=−0.037 ), confirming it tracks stability. Error bars: ±1 s.d. across sessions.
Figure 3: Learning curves: activity (left), scene (right). Dual at 10% budget matches the performance achieved using all frames. Shaded: ±1 s.d. (10 seeds).
Strategy
AULC
95% CI
vs. Random
p
Dual
0.223
[0.223,0.223]
+0.025
<0.001
Gaze-only
0.218
[0.218,0.218]
+0.020
<0.001
Pupil-abs
0.215
[0.215,0.215]
+0.018
<0.001
Gate+Random †
0.205
[0.196,0.215]
+0.007
0.210
Naive fusion ‡
0.198
[0.198,0.198]
+0.000
1.000
Random
0.197
[0.189,0.205]
—
—
Table 2: AULC (mean macro F1 across budgets 5%–100%) for activity recognition, 10 seeds. † Gate+Rand: gaze gate, random within pool. ‡ 3 seeds; deterministic ranking (zero variance).
Budget
Dual
Gate+Rand
ΔF1
p
Cohen’s d
5%
0.205
0.179±0.031
+0.026
0.030
0.86
10%
0.228
0.188±0.037
+0.040
0.009
1.10
25%
0.220
0.190±0.020
+0.030
0.001
1.54
50%
0.225
0.215±0.022
+0.010
0.230
0.43
75%
0.228
0.229±0.001
−0.000
0.207
—
Table 3: Ablation: dual vs. gate+random for activity recognition. Pupil ranking wins at 5–25% budgets.
Gate %
b=10%
b=25%
b=50%
Mean
25%
0.176
0.229
0.229
0.211
50%
0.225
0.237
0.205
0.222
75%
0.228
0.220
0.225
0.224
90%
0.149
0.246
0.232
0.209
100% (no gate)
0.161
0.257
0.259
0.225
Table 4: Gate threshold ablation for activity recognition. 75% is optimal at 10% budget.
Figure 4: Task-Dependent Performance. (a) Activity: pupil ranking improves over gaze-only and random. (b) Scene: gaze-only dominates; pupil adds no benefit.
Strategy
AULC
95% CI
vs. Random
p
Gaze-only
0.280
[0.280,0.280]
+0.015
<0.001
Random
0.265
[0.261,0.270]
—
—
Gate+Random
0.262
[0.258,0.266]
−0.003
1.000
Naive fusion ‡
0.256
[0.256,0.256]
−0.009
1.000
Pupil-abs
0.255
[0.255,0.255]
−0.011
1.000
Dual
0.253
[0.253,0.253]
−0.012
1.000
Table 6: AULC (mean macro F1 across budgets 5%–100%) for scene recognition, 10 seeds. ‡ 3 seeds; deterministic ranking (zero variance).
Task
Delayed Wins
No-Delay Wins
Interpretation
Activity
10 / 12
2 / 12
Delay captures transition arousal
Scene
4 / 12
8 / 12
Scene is frame-local
Table 7: Temporal alignment. Delayed wins for activity; no-delay for scene.
Figure 5: Qualitative Comparison. Top: dual-criterion (high gaze, high pupil). Bottom: random baseline, including blur and low-information content.
Task
Sessions
Best F1
Chance
Verdict
Phone vs. Computer
31
0.507
0.50
At chance
Cog. vs. Phys. Games
15
0.912
0.50
Visually separable
Table 8: Fine-grained classification. No benefit at representation floor (phone vs. computer) or for trivially separable categories.
Strategy
Linear
MLP
GBT
Dual (gaze75 + pupil)
0.223
0.220
0.133
Gaze-only
0.218
0.225
0.135
Pupil-abs
0.215
0.208
0.124
Gate + random
0.205
0.238
0.144
Naive fusion
0.198
0.219
0.132
Random
0.197
0.224
0.145
Table 9: AULC (mean macro F1 across 6 budgets, 10 seeds) per strategy and classifier for activity recognition . Naive fusion ranks near the bottom across all three classifiers.
Strategy
Linear
MLP
GBT
Gaze-only
0.280
0.294
0.245
Random
0.265
0.282
0.276
Gate + random
0.262
0.280
0.270
Naive fusion
0.256
0.266
0.233
Pupil-abs
0.255
0.272
0.230
Dual (gaze75 + pupil)
0.253
0.265
0.240
Table 10: AULC (mean macro F1 across 6 budgets, 10 seeds) per strategy and classifier for scene recognition . Gaze-only leads under Linear and MLP; rankings are more variable under GBT.
Activity
Scene
Strategy
Default
Balanced
Default
Balanced
Dual (gaze75 + pupil)
0.223
0.219
0.253
0.247
Gaze-only
0.218
0.214
0.280
0.269
Pupil-abs
0.215
0.222
0.255
0.249
Gate + random
0.205
0.197
0.262
0.256
Naive fusion ‡
0.198
0.205
0.256
0.254
Table 11: AULC under default vs. balanced class weights (linear probe). Strategy rankings are preserved. ‡ 3 seeds.
Task
Strategy
Global F1
Stratified F1
Δ
Activity
Dual (gaze75 + pupil)
0.228
0.248
+0.020
Gaze-only
0.213
0.224
+0.011
Random
0.184
0.193
+0.008
Pupil-abs
0.161
0.188
+0.027
Naive fusion ‡
0.164
0.198
+0.034
Scene
Dual (gaze75 + pupil)
0.270
0.268
−0.001
Table 12: Global vs. stratified at 10% budget. Stratified helps activity; mixed for scene. ‡ 3 seeds.
Gate %
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
100%
Mean
25%
0.196
0.176
0.229
0.229
0.229
0.229
0.214
50%
0.132
0.225
0.237
0.205
0.205
0.205
0.201
75%
0.205
0.228
0.220
0.225
0.228
0.228
0.223
90%
0.167
0.149
0.246
0.232
0.185
0.216
0.199
100% (no gate)
0.173
0.161
0.257
0.259
0.218
0.224
0.215
Table 13: Gate threshold ablation (activity, 10 seeds, 6 budgets). 75% achieves best F1 at 10% budget.
Strategy
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
100%
AULC
Dual (75% + pupil)
0.205
0.228
0.220
0.225
0.228
0.228
0.223
Gaze-only
0.207
0.213
0.230
0.204
0.227
0.225
0.218
Pupil-abs
0.173
0.161
0.257
0.259
0.218
0.224
0.215
Gate + random (75%)
0.179
0.188
0.190
0.215
0.229
0.229
0.205
Dual (50% + pupil)
0.132
0.225
0.237
0.205
0.205
0.205
0.201
Naive fusion ‡
0.177
0.164
0.190
0.208
0.223
0.225
0.198
Table 14: Per-budget macro F1 and AULC for activity recognition , ranked by AULC. ‡ 3 seeds.
Strategy
5%
10%
25%
50%
75%
100%
AULC
Gaze-only
0.342
0.321
0.256
0.249
0.251
0.260
0.280
Random
0.294
0.270
0.257
0.256
0.256
0.259
0.265
Gate + random (75%)
0.283
0.274
0.257
0.256
0.251
0.251
0.262
Gate + random (50%)
0.289
0.271
0.252
0.249
0.249
0.249
0.260
Dual (50% + pupil)
0.259
0.277
0.271
0.249
0.249
0.249
0.259
Naive fusion ‡
0.261
0.269
0.238
0.252
0.259
0.260
0.256
Table 15: Per-budget macro F1 and AULC for scene recognition , ranked by AULC. ‡ 3 seeds.
Statistic
Value
Total sessions
717
Sessions with eye tracking
136
Sessions with synchronized gaze + pupil
119
Unique observers
56
Age range
7–46 years
Total frames (1 fps)
154,819
Table 16: VEDB dataset statistics after quality filtering.
Video frame selection chooses a compact set of frames that preserves important events, context, or task-specific evidence while reducing processing costs.
Gaze estimation under natural head-eye motion underpins applications from driver monitoring to human-computer interaction. Single-frame methods predict each frame independently, so consecutive outputs fluctuate as jitter. Multi-frame methods reduce this, but they learn motion implicitly inside appearance features, so the gaze trajectory is never an explicit variable. We propose EyeTAG (Eye Trajectory-Aware Gaze Estimation), a causal multi-frame framework built around an explicit first-order gaze prior: at each step it differentiates its own recent predictions and feeds the resulting trajectory back as a compact kinematic token. Because differencing is translation-invariant in gaze space, this token carries subject-invariant motion rather than personal gaze offsets. Face and eye streams supply visual evidence, fused by cross-attention and a causal Transformer decoder. EyeTAG reduces the mean angular error by about 1.0∘ on Gaze360 and performs on par with the strongest baseline on EVE (2.56∘ vs. 2.58∘). Within-model ablations, which keep the encoder and the rest of the architecture fixed and vary only the gaze history, show that the differential formulation, rather than temporal context alone, removes the systematic saccade bias that persists even with an absolute gaze-history prior. Our code is available at https://github.com/peter8366/EyeTAG.
Jungmin Lee, Niamat Ullah, Yoseob Han
Department of Information and Telecommunication Engineering Soongsil University Seoul, Republic of Korea · Department of Electronic Engineering Soongsil University Seoul, Republic of Korea
Inspired by human vision, we introduce a framework using active gaze to enable fine-grained bimanual manipulation with only a single stereo camera. EyeRobot 2.0 physically attends to a 3D fixation point in the scene by swiveling two eye viewpoints to center their gaze on it. The resulting images are processed foveally by allocating more visual tokens to the image centers, focusing computation on task-relevant features. Such Active Visual Fixation (AVF) requires carefully coordinated gaze during task execution, which we accomplish hierarchically by first training a low-level gaze servoing policy conditioned on a goal object, then training a target selector which emits fixation goals based on task progress. Both modules are trained with RL on real-world data: the first is trained with a dense geometric reward and the second co-trains with the BC gripper policy which allows it to discover fixation sequences that can resemble a human's fixation sequence while performing the task. EyeRobot 2.0 further takes advantage of fixation by canonicalizing gripper information into a fixation-relative SE(3) frame, which compacts the size of the action distribution to learn. We collect teleoperation data for 7 real-world and 6 simulated tasks, and conduct over 1000 physical and 1800 simulated robot trials comparing EyeRobot 2.0 against passive stereo and ego + wrist camera policies trained on the same data. Removing wrist cameras is costly for standard policies: with only passive stereo, real-world success drops from 52% to 27%. EyeRobot 2.0 closes this gap with only stereo, outperforming passive stereo by 40% in real and 20% in sim. It matches ego + wrist policies when their wrist views are clear (69% vs. 64%), and more than doubles their success when grasped objects occlude the wrist cameras (48% vs. 22%)
Eye tracking (ET) is a foundational technology for advanced AR/VR applications. However, training ET models for every new ET device is challenging: real data collection is costly and time-consuming, while existing synthetic data generation methods lack realism. To remove the need for additional data collection while maintaining data quality, we introduce a data-driven 3D prior that models the distribution of human eyes across diverse identities, gaze directions, and light settings. This model, which we coin GazePrior, then enables sparse-input 3D reconstruction of annotated data collected with previous ET devices, which can in turn be rendered from the cameras of any target ET device. Our approach synthesizes data with the realism, diversity and ground-truth accuracy of real data collection without its prohibitive costs. Our experiments demonstrate that ET models trained with our synthesized data outperform previous zero-shot methods, achieving higher accuracy and robustness.
Corentin Dumery, David Colmenares, Alexander Fix +3
Meta Reality Labs, Redmond, USA · EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland · Work done during an internship at Meta