Fast and accurate eye tracking in a virtual reality or augmented reality headset could lead to better display performance and enable novel methods of user interaction with the system. However, it remains a challenge for a system to combine the required operational speed and accuracy of eye tracking with a technology that has a small enough form factor and weight to be easily integrated into a user-friendly headset. By using small, lightweight hardware comprising a high frame rate microLED array and fast single pixel detector, we report a model eye tracking system based on single pixel tracking and a specially developed set of deep learned illumination patterns. This model system is used to demonstrate eye tracking with an angular accuracy of better than one degree and a measurement rate of up to 3.59 kHz.
@article{arxiv.2512.11592,
title = {Compact Eye Tracking for VR/AR Displays via Deep Learned MicroLED Projection and Single-Pixel Sensing},
author = {Graeme E. Johnstone and Catherine F. Higham and Aisha Kanwal and Johannes Herrnsdorf and Robert K. Henderson and Martin D. Dawson and Roderick Murray-Smith and Michael J. Strain},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.11592},
year = {2025}
}