Päivi Majaranta PhD Thesis on Text Entry by Eye Gaze

The most complete publication on gaze typing is now available as Päivi Majaranta at the University of Tampere have successfully defended her PhD thesis. It summarizes previous work and discusses/exemplifies important topics such as word prediction, layout, feedback and user aspects. The material is presented in a straight forward manner with a clear structure and excellent illustrations. It will without doubt be useful for anyone who is about to design and develop a gaze based text entry interface. Congratulations Päivi for such an well written thesis.

• Majaranta, P. (2009) Text Entry by Eye Gaze. Dissertations in Interactive Technology, number 11, University of Tampere (ISBN 978-951-44-7786-7). Also available in Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis; 869 (978-951-44-7787-4).

SMI RED 250!

Today SMI announced the new RED250 which, as the name suggests, has an impressive 250Hz sampling rate. It has an accuracy of 0.5 degrees or below (typ.), less than 10 ms. latency and operates within 60-80 cm head distance. The track-box is 40x40 cm at 70cm distance and will recover tracking faster than the previous model. No details on pricing yet but top of the line performance never comes cheap. Get the flyer as pdf.

Survey on gaze visualization in 3D virtual environments

Got an email today from Sophie Stellmach a PhD student from the User Interface & Software Engineering group at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Germany. She has posted an online survey and would like your some input from eye tracking specialists on 3D gaze visualization.

"In the course of my work I have developed several gaze visualizations for facilitating eye tracking studies in (static) three-dimensional virtual environments. In order to evaluate the potential utility of these techniques, I am conducting an online survey with eye tracking researchers and professionals. I would like to invite you to this survey as I think that your answers are highly valuable for this investigation. The survey should take less than 10 minutes of your time! Your answers will be stored anonymously. You can access the survey under the following link: http://gamescience.bth.se/survey/index.php?sid=27319=en "

Telegaze update

Remember the TeleGaze robot developed by Hemin Omer which I wrote about last September? Today there is a new video available showing an updated interface which appears to be somewhat improved, no further information is available.
Update: The new version includes an automatic "person-following" mode which can be turned on or off through the interface. See video below

Gaze Interaction in Immersive Virtual Reality - 3D Eye Tracking in Virtual Worlds

Thies Pfeiffer (blog) working in the A.I group at the Faculty of technology, Bielefeld University in Germany have presented some interesting research on 3D gaze interaction in virtual environments. As the video demonstrates they have achieved high accuracy for gaze based pointing and selection. This opens up for a wide range of interesting man-machine interaction where digital avatars may mimic natural human behavior. Impressive.



Publications

• Pfeiffer, T. (2008). Towards Gaze Interaction in Immersive Virtual Reality: Evaluation of a Monocular Eye Tracking Set-Up. In Virtuelle und Erweiterte Realität - Fünfter Workshop der GI-Fachgruppe VR/AR, 81-92. Aachen: Shaker Verlag GmbH. [Abstract] [BibTeX] [PDF]

• Pfeiffer, T., Latoschik, M.E. & Wachsmuth, I. (2008). Evaluation of Binocular Eye Trackers and Algorithms for 3D Gaze Interaction in Virtual Reality Environments. Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting, 5 (16), dec. [Abstract] [BibTeX] [URL] [PDF]

• Pfeiffer, T., Donner, M., Latoschik, M.E. & Wachsmuth, I. (2007). 3D fixations in real and virtual scenarios. Journal of Eye Movement Research, Special issue: Abstracts of the ECEM 2007, 13.

• Pfeiffer, T., Donner, M., Latoschik, M.E. & Wachsmuth, I. (2007). Blickfixationstiefe in stereoskopischen VR-Umgebungen: Eine vergleichende Studie. In Vierter Workshop Virtuelle und Erweiterte Realität der GI-Fachgruppe VR/AR, 113-124. Aachen: Shaker. [Abstract] [BibTeX] [PDF]

List of all publications available here.

Gaze & Voice recognition game development blog

Jonathan O'Donovan, a masters student in Interactive Entertainment Technology at the Trinity College in Dublin, have recently started a blog for his thesis. It will combine gaze and voice recognition for developing a new video game. So far the few posts available have mainly concerned the underlying framework but a proof-of-concept combining gaze and voice is demonstrated. The project will be developed on a Microsoft Windows based platform and utilizes the XNA game development framework for graphics and the Microsoft Speech SDK for voice input. The eye tracker of choice is a Tobii T60 provided by Acuity ETS (Reading, UK). The thesis will be supervised by Veronica Sundstedt at the Trinity College Computer Science dept.
Keep us posten Jonathan, excitied to see what you'll come up with!





Update: 
The project resulted in the Rabbit Run game which is documented in the following publication:

• J. O’Donovan, J. Ward, S. Hodgins, V. Sundstedt (2009) Rabbit Run: Gaze and Voice Based Game Interaction (PDF). 

Oculis labs Chameleon prevents over shoulder reading

"Two years ago computer security expert Bill Anderson read about scientific research on how the human eye moves as it reads and processes text and images. 'This obscure characteristic... suddenly struck me as (a solution to) a security problem,' says Anderson. With the help of a couple of software developers, Anderson developed a software program called Chameleon that tracks a viewer's gaze patterns and only allows an authorized user to read text on the screen, while everyone else sees gibberish. Chameleon uses gaze-tracking software and camera equipment to track an authorized reader's eyes to show only that one person the correct text. After a 15-second calibration period in which the software learns the viewer's gaze patterns, anyone looking over that user's shoulder sees dummy text that randomly and constantly changes. To tap the broader consumer market, Anderson built a more consumer-friendly version called PrivateEye, which can work with a simple Webcam to blur a user's monitor when he or she turns away. It also detects other faces in the background, and a small video screen pops up to alert the user that someone is looking at the screen. 'There have been inventions in the space of gaze-tracking. There have been inventions in the space of security,' says Anderson. 'But nobody has put the two ideas together, as far as we know.'" (source)

Patent application
Article by Baltimore Sun

Video from COGAIN2009

John Paulin Hansen has posted a video showing some highlights from the annual COGAIN conference. It demonstrates three available gaze interaction solutions, the COGAIN GazeTalk interface, Tobii Technologies MyTobii and Alea Technologies IG-30. These interfaces relies on dwell-activated on-screen keyboards ( i.e. same procedure as last year).

COGAIN 2009 Proceedings now online

There is little reason to doubt the vitality of the COGAIN network. This years proceedings presents an impressive 18 papers spread out over one hundred pages. It covers a wide range of areas from low-cost eye tracking, text entry, gaze input for gaming, multimodal interaction to environment control, clinical assessments and case studies. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the event this year (recently relocated) but with the hefty proceedings being available online there is plenty of material to be read through (program and links to authors here) Thanks to Arantxa Villanuevua, John Paulin Hansen and Bjarne Kjaer Ersboll for the editorial effort.

Toshiba eye tracking for automotive applications

Seen this one coming for a while. Wonder how stable it would be in a real-life scenario..
Via Donald Melanson at Engadget:
"We've seen plenty of systems that rely on facial recognition for an interface, but they've so far been a decidedly rarer occurrence when it comes to in-car systems. Toshiba looks set to change that, however, with it now showing off a new system that'll not only let you control the A/C or radio with the glance of your eye, but alert you if you happen to take your eyes off the road for too long. That's done with the aid of a camera mounted above the steering wheel that's used to identify and map out the driver's face, letting the car (or desktop PC in this demonstration) detect everything from head movement and eye direction to eyelid blinks, which Toshiba says could eventually be used to alert drowsy drivers. Unfortunately, Toshiba doesn't have any immediate plans to commercialize the technology, although it apparently busily working to make it more suited for embedded CPUs." (source)