Effect of horizontal position on detecting persons looking towards the robot

Service robots are expected to work in places with many people. These robots need to find persons who would like to receive their service. Humans tend to gaze towards a person with whom they would like to start communication. Gaze direction is thus a good indicator for locating interested persons. We believe however that persons not making direct eye contact with a human observer and not exposing the full face area may also be recognized as looking towards a person, and possibly in need of service. This study explores the viability of detecting a person looking towards a camera by not only determining gaze direction, but also considering the position of the face in a scene. This paper shows how the horizontal position of a face along with the face direction influences the selection of interested persons.