Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Mobile gaze-based screen interaction in 3D environments (D. Mardanbeigi, 2011)

Diako Mardanbeigi presents a method that enables the user to interact with any planar digital display in a 3D environment using a head-mounted eye tracker. An effective method for identifying the screens in the field of view of the user is also presented which can be applied in a general scenario in which multiple users can interact with multiple screens. Diakos PhD project at ITU Copenhagen concerns mobile gaze-based interaction. 





Related publication: 
  • Diako Mardanbegi and Dan Witzner Hansen. 2011. Mobile gaze-based screen interaction in 3D environments. In Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications(NGCA '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, , Article 2 , 4 pages. PDF/Online
Posted by Martin Tall at 29.6.11
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Monday, June 27, 2011

Setscan EyeLock - Law enforcement training system

Setscan, a Canadian supplier of training equipment for law enforcement and military have partnered with Arrington Research to develop a binocular headmounted system with associated software called Eye Lock. The system aims at evaluating and optimizing officers allocation of visual attention. Looking at the right thing is obviously important as milliseconds count when guns are drawn. The eye tracking system is the same as those used for any natural-scene perception research but the market adaptation and focus to meet the needs of a specific domain is interesting.

Posted by Martin Tall at 27.6.11
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UCSF using eye tracking to detect early stages of neurodegeneration

Sabes Lab at University of California, San Francisco are using high speed eye tracking systems to study eye movements as a tool for detecting neurodegenerative diseases. The data collected including response time, fixation accuracy and saccade velocity. These are important parameters that could identify approaching or existing neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer. This area holds a great market potential and is feasible in a near future as the remote systems are coming closer to meeting the requirements of tracker speed and accuracy.

Posted by Martin Tall at 27.6.11
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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The EyeHarp: An Eye Tracking Based Musical Instrument



The main goal of the Zacharias Vamvakousis EyeHarp project is to allow people with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis to play music using only their eyes. To build this, Zacharias was inspired by the EyeWriter open source initiative: "...a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes". Zacharias spent only 50 euros to build his eye tracker using a modified version of the Sony PS3 eye camera. The application is implemented in openframeworks v0.6. 


Alternatively, the instrument can be controlled using the mouse pointer (MouseHarp version). Then the free software camera mouse can be used to control the instrument with head movements. Any technology that can take control of the mouse pointer can be used in order to control the instrument. That way the mouseHarp could be an appropriate instrument for many cases of people with physical disabilities. The mouseHarp version is completely independent from the eyeWriter project. Combining the mouseHarp source with the source of the eyeWriter project, we get the eyeHarp! A low-cost gaze controlled musical instrument! Both versions are free and open source.

The EyeHarp project is part of Zacharias master thesis in Sound And Music Computing in UPF, Barcelona. His supervisor is Rafael Ramirez.

A paper on the application has been published:
  • Vamvakousis Z., Ramirez R. (2011) The Eyeharp: Aa Eye-Tracking-based Musical Instrument. SMC Conference 2011, Padova, Italy (PDF) 
Posted by Martin Tall at 21.6.11
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Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Grinbath's EyeGuide

Texas based Grinbath recently announced the EyeGuide head mounted tracker. It's main competitive advantage is the low cost $1495, academic discounts are available ($1,179). The device captures eye images using a wireless camera, running on three AAA batteries, and streams these to a computer for processing. The package includes basic software for analysis and visualization.  See the whitepaper for more information. 

Posted by Martin Tall at 7.6.11
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Monday, June 6, 2011

Proceedings from Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications 2011 online

The proceedings from the Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications 2011 conference are now available online. The conference that took place at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden during May 26-27 presented 11 talks covering a wide range of topics from gaming and gaze interaction to eye tracking solutions. Unfortunately I was unable to attend but luckily I'll have a couple of days interesting reading ahead. Kudos to Veronica Sundstedt and Charlotte Sennersten for organizing the event.
  • Gaze and voice controlled drawing
    Jan van der Kamp, Veronica Sundstedt
    Full text: PDF Online

  • Eye tracking within the packaging design workflow: interaction with physical and virtual shelves
    Chip Tonkin, Andrew D. Ouzts, Andrew T. Duchowski
    Full text: PDF Online
Posted by Martin Tall at 6.6.11
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Monday, May 9, 2011

"Read my Eyes" - A presentation of the ITU Gaze Tracker

During the last month the guys at IT University of Copenhagen has been involved in the making of a video that's intended to introduce the ITU Gaze Tracker, an open source eye tracker, to a wider audience. The production has been carried out in collaboration with the Communication Department at the university and  features members of the group, students of the HCI class and Birger Bergmann Jeppesen who has had ALS since 1996. Many thanks to all involved, especially Birger & co for taking interest and participating in evaluation of the system.

Posted by Martin Tall at 9.5.11
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Monday, May 2, 2011

1st International Workshop on Pervasive Eye Tracking and Mobile Eye-Based Interaction

During the UbiComp 2011 in Beijing in September the 1st International Workshop on Pervasive Eye Tracking and Mobile Eye-Based Interaction (PETMEI) will be held. Keynote speaker is Jeff B. Pelz who has considerable experience with eye tracking during natural tasks. The call for paper is out, see details below.
"Recent developments in mobile eye tracking equipment and automated eye movement analysis point the way toward unobtrusive eye-based human-computer interfaces that are pervasively usable in everyday life. We call this new paradigm pervasive eye tracking – continuous eye monitoring and analysis 24/7. The potential applications for the ability to track and analyze eye movements anywhere and anytime call for new research to further develop and understand visual behaviour and eye-based interaction in daily life settings. PETMEI 2011 will focus on pervasive eye tracking as a trailblazer for mobile eye-based interaction and eye-based context-awareness. We provide a forum for researchers from human-computer interaction, context-aware computing, and eye tracking to discuss techniques and applications that go beyond classical eye tracking and stationary eye-based interaction. We want to stimulate and explore the creativity of these communities with respect to the implications, key research challenges, and new applications for pervasive eye tracking in ubiquitous computing. The long-term goal is to create a strong interdisciplinary research community linking these fields together and to establish the workshop as the premier forum for research on pervasive eye tracking."
Important Dates
  • Paper Submission: May 30, 2011
  • Notification of Acceptance: June 27, 2011
  • Camera-ready due: July 11, 2011
  • Workshop: September 18, 2011


Topics
Topics of interest cover computational methods, new applications and use cases, as well as eye tracking technology for pervasive eye tracking and mobile eye-based interaction. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:


Methods
  • Computer vision tools for face, eye detection and tracking
  • Pattern recognition/machine learning for gaze and eye movement analysis
  • Integration of pervasive eye tracking and context-aware computing
  • Real-time multi-modality sensor fusion
  • Techniques for eye tracking on portable devices
  • Methods for long-term gaze and eye movement monitoring and analysis
  • Gaze modeling for development of conversational agents
  • Evaluation of context-aware systems and interfaces
  • User studies on impact of and user experience with pervasive eye tracking
  • Visual and non-visual feedback for eye-based interfaces
  • Interaction techniques including multimodal approaches
  • Analysis and interpretation of attention in HCI
  • Dual and group eye tracking
Applications
  • Mobile eye-based interaction with public displays, tabletops, and smart environments
  • Eye-based activity and context recognition
  • Pervasive healthcare, e.g. mental health monitoring or rehabilitation
  • Autism research
  • Daily life usability studies and market research
  • Mobile attentive user interfaces
  • Security and privacy for pervasive eye tracking systems
  • Eye tracking in automotive research
  • Eye tracking in multimedia research
  • Assistive systems, e.g. mobile eye-based text entry
  • Mobile eye tracking and interaction for augmented and virtual reality
  • Eye-based human-robot and human-agent interaction
  • Cognition-aware systems and user interfaces
  • Human factors in mobile eye-based interaction
  • Eye movement measures in affective computing
Technologies
  • New devices for portable and wearable eye tracking
  • Extension of existing systems for mobile interaction
See the submission details for more information. 
Posted by Martin Tall at 2.5.11
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Friday, April 29, 2011

GazeGroup's Henrik Skovsgaard wins "Stars with brains" competiton

During the Danish Research Day 2011 Henrik Skovsgaard, PhD candidate at @ ITU Copenhagen, won the competition "Stars with Brains" (Stjerner med hjerner). Several high profile individuals (stars) were present including the Minister of Science, Princess Marie and Mayor Frank Jensen. The competition consisted of eight doctoral students (brains) from universities across Denmark who presented their research in a layman terms. The audience voted on their favorite candidate using SMS messaging whereby a panel of judges evaluated the participants. Later in the day Henrik was invited to an interview on the Aftenshow on national TV. Henriks research at the IT University of Copenhagen focuses primarily on gaze-based interaction as a communication tool for disabled and have participated in the development of the Gazegroup.org software. A big congrats to Henrik for the award, excellent public outreach and associated stardom!

PhD student Henrik Skovsgaard won the "Stars with brains". Photo: Tariq Mikkel Khan (source)

From right: Mayor Frank Jensen, HRH Princess Marie and Minister of Science Charlotte Sahl-Madsen. Photo: Tariq Mikkel Khan (source)



Posted by Martin Tall at 29.4.11
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Specs for SMI GazeWear released

The specifications for the SMI GazeWear has just been announced. The head mounted tracker takes the shape of a pair of glasses and has a impressive set of features. It offers 30Hz binocular tracking (both eyes) at 0.5 deg accuracy with automatic parallax compensation for accurate gaze estimation over distances above 40cm. The dark pupil, corneal reflection based system has a tracking range of 70° horizontal / 55°. vertical angle. SMI has managed to squeeze in a HD scene camera located in the center of the frame which offers 1280x960 resolution at 30 frames per second. However, the viewing angle is slightly smaller than the tracking range at 63° horizontal and 41° vertical angle. The weight of the device is specified to 75 grams with the dimensions of 173x58x168mm (w/h/d) and is estimated to fit subjects above age 7.

SMI GazeWear
A mobile recording unit is offered which stores data on a SD card, weighs 420 grams, and has minimum of 40 minutes recording time. However, a subnotebook can be used to extend recording time towards two hours.   

With the new tracker SMI seriously improves their offering in the head mounted segment with a form factor that certainly appears more attractive to a wide range of applications. The specs stands up well against the Tobii glasses which has a similar form but is limited to monocular tracking and a lower resolution scene camera.  No details on availability is provided other than "coming soon", something we heard since late December. Once they are out the game is on. 

The flyer may be downloaded as pdf.
Posted by Martin Tall at 27.4.11
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