Gaze Interaction Demo (Powerwall@Konstanz Uni.)

During the last few years quite a few wall sized displays have been used for novel interaction methods. Not seldomly these have been used with multi-touch, such as the Jeff Han´s FTIR technology. This is the first demonstration I have seen where eye tracking is used for a similar purpose. A German Ph.D candidate, Jo Bieg, is working on this out of the HCI department at the University of Konstanz. The Powerwall is 5.20 x 2.15M and has a resolution of 4640 x 1920.

The demonstration can be view at a better quality (10Mb)

Also make sure to check out the 360 deg. Globorama display demonstration. It does not use eye tracking for interaction but a laser pointer. Nevertheless, really cool immersive experience, especially the Google Earth zoom in to 360 panoramas.

Inspiration: EyeMusic & EyeFollower by Interactive Minds

From the German based lab Interactive Minds provides the EyeMusic interface which lets you play songs. Not much information is available except the screenshot below.

http://www.interactive-minds.de/en/software/eye_music.htm

However, their eye tracker "EyeFollower" seems more impressive. 120Hz sampling and 0.45 deg. accuracy. Furthermore, it allows for larger and faster head movements than most other remote based systems. This is really important for making the tracking flexible, which is what you want with a remote based system in the first place. People move around, we all change posture over time. Imagine sitting at a desk then turning to the side taking notes, talking on the phone. When you return to the computer it should instantaneously continue to track your gaze without any noticeable delay (or having to re-calibrate) These are not easy tasks to solve but are necessary for the advancement of eye tracking/gaze interaction. Interactive Minds provides a demonstration video of their EyeFollower. Looks great.

Inspiration: Looking my Way through the Menu: The Impact of Menu Design and Multimodal Input on Gaze-based Menu Selection

As discussed earlier in my blog the differences between gaze vs mouse based interaction calls for interfaces that are especially designed for the purpose. A group of German researchers present a novel approach based on a radial menu layout. The work has been carried out by Yvonne Kammerer and Katharina Scheiter both at the Knowledge Media Research Center, University of Tuebingen in conjunction with Wolfgang Beinhauer at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, Stuttgart.

My own prototype contains U.I elements that are based on the same on the style of interaction. However, this work goes further towards a multi-level menu system while my component is aiming more for a quick one-level saccade selection. The advantages of the radial layout in a gaze based menu component is discussed in this paper. Interesting concept, looking forward to the presentation at the SWAET2008 conference.

Abstract
"In this paper a study is reported, which investigates the effectiveness of two approaches to improving gaze-based interaction for realistic and complex menu selection tasks. The first approach focuses on identifying menu designs for hierarchical menus that are particularly suitable for gaze-based interaction, whereas the second approach is based on the idea of combining gaze-based interaction with speech as a second input modality. In an experiment with 40 participants the impact of menu design, input device, and navigation complexity on accuracy and completion time in a menu selection task as well as on user satisfaction were investigated. The results concerning both objective task performance and subjective ratings confirmed our expectations in that a semi-circle menu was better suited for gaze-based menu selection than either a linear or a full-circle menu. Contrary to our expectations, an input device solely based on eye gazes turned out to be superior to the combined gaze- and speech-based device. Moreover, the drawbacks of a less suitable menu design (i.e., of a linear menu or a full-circle menu) as well as of the multimodal input device particularly obstructed performance in the case of more complex navigational tasks." Download paper as pdf.

Mix08 Talk: New forms of interaction

Mainly on interfaces based on multitouch and speech, however many issues are relevant for gaze interaction as well.

Title: Touch Me: Where Are Interfaces Going?
Speaker(s): Chris Bernard, Dale Herigstad, Daniel Makoski, Dave Wolfe, Doug Cook, Yoshihiro Saito
Description: The keyboard and mouse are aging input devices. For the future of computing and UX, where are interfaces going? Are these enough? Is touch-screen Surface/iPhone/iPod Touch just a gimmick? Where should Man Machine Interface (MMI) go?

WMV link: http://msstudios.vo.llnwd.net/o21/mix08/08_WMVs/PNL10.wmv
MP4 link: http://msstudios.vo.llnwd.net/o21/mix08/08_MP4s/PNL10.mp4

RApid GAze-Based Interaction Techniques (RAGABITS)

Stephen Vickers at the Computer Human Interaction Research Group at the De Montfort University, Uk have developed interaction techniques that allows gaze based control of several popular online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft or Second Life. This research will be presented at ETRA 2008, US under the title RAGABITS (RApid GAze-Based Interaction Techniques) and is espcially intented for users with severe motor impairments.

Selection method seems stable. None of the usual jitter can be seen. Nice!



Quote from http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/projects/eyegaze.html

"Online virtual worlds and games (MMORPG's) have much to offer users with severe motor disabilities. It gives this user group the opportunity as entirely able-bodied to others in the virtual world. if they so wish. The extent to which a user has to reveal their disability becomes a privacy issue. Many of the avatars in Second Life appear as stylized versions of the users that control them and that stylization is the choice of the user. This choice is equally appropriate for disabled users. While the appearance of the user's avatar may not reveal the disability of the person that controls it, the behavior and speed or interaction in the world may do.

Many users with severe motor impairments may not be able to operate a keyboard or hand mouse and may also struggle with speech and head movement. Eye gaze is one method of interaction that has been used successfully in enabling access to desktop environments. However, simply emulating a mouse using eye gaze is not sufficient for interaction in online virtual worlds and the users privacy can be exposed unless efficient gaze-based interaction techniques, appropriate to activities in on-line worlds and games can be provided.

This genre of gaming (MMORPG's) is constantly evolving and regardless of the aim of the game they all involve common tasks such as, avatar creation, social interaction (chatting, IM), interaction with in world objects (pick up, open, shoot etc), navigating and walking around the environment. Our research involves analyzing these common tasks so that suitable gaze based interaction techniques to support them can be used in place of a mouse and keyboard. These will have different performance/effort trade-offs, and will include extended mouse/joystick emulation, gaze gestures, toolglasses and gaze-aware in-world objects. These techniques need to be integrated into a coherent and efficient user interface suited to the needs of an individual user with a particular disability. The research aims to model tasks inherent in using these worlds so that predictions can be made about the most appropriate gaze based interaction techniques to use. When these have been identified, they can be assembled into a front end or user interface. One possible outcome could be a software device for automatic configuration of a gaze-control interface for new games, which could use knowledge of a specific user's disability and the eye tracking equipment that they have."

Inspiration: Takehiko Ohno

Working out of NTT Cyber Solutions Laboratories in Japan Takehiko interests lies mainly in eye tracking technology and human computer interaction. He has published several papers on eye tracking technology and interaction methods. The QuickGlance selection method aims to solve the well known Midas-touch problem. The interface contains a specific selection area next to each choice/item which must be fixated to activate the function. There are two major advantages with this. First, the user can look around at the menu items without worrying about accidentally activating something. Second, advanced users can go for the activation area directly without even reading the menu text. Just like most people know the order/location of items on the Windows Start-menu. On the downside this means that all options are displayed on the screen all the time.

Takehiko additionally have published several articles on FreeGaze, a remote based system which allows the user to move around his head freely. The FreeGaze eye tracker at NTT has a 0.28 degree of accuracy and is based on a rather wide stereoscopic corneal reflection method using serveral image processing algorithms described in the papers, which are well written and worth reading.

His research highlights the importance of providing feedback to the user as the major method of reducing error rates. Something that I've taken to heart.

• Publications
  
  
• Website

Eye Gaze Interaction with Expanding Targets (Minotas, Spakov, MacKenzie, 2004)

Continuing on the topic of expanding areas this paper presents an approach where the expansion of the target area is invisible.The authors introduce their algorithm called "Grab-and-hold" which aims at stablizing the gaze data and performs a two part experiment to evaluate it.

Abstract
"Recent evidence on the performance benefits of expanding targets during manual pointing raises a provocative question: Can a similar effect be expected for eye gaze interaction? We present two experiments to examine the benefits of target expansion during an eye-controlled selection task. The second experiment also tested the efficiency of a “grab-and-hold algorithm” to counteract inherent eye jitter. Results confirm the benefits of target expansion both in pointing speed and accuracy. Additionally, the grab-and-hold algorithm affords a dramatic 57% reduction in error rates overall. The reduction is as much as 68% for targets subtending 0.35 degrees of visual angle. However, there is a cost which surfaces as a slight increase in movement time (10%). These findings indicate that target expansion coupled with additional measures to accommodate eye jitter has the potential to make eye gaze a more suitable input modality." (Paper available here)

Their "Grab-and-hold" algorithm that puts some more intelligent processing of the gaze data. "Upon appearance of the target, there is a settle-down period of 200 ms during which the gaze is expected to land in the target area and stay there. Then, the algorithm filters the gaze points until the first sample inside the expanded target area is logged. When this occurs, the target is highlighted and the selection timer triggered. The selection timer counts down a specified dwell time (DT) interval. "

While reading this paper I came to think about an important question concerning filtering of gaze data. The delay that comes from collecting the samples used for the algorithm processing causes a delay in the interaction. For example, if I were to sample 50 gaze positions and then average these to reduce the jitter it would result in a one second delay on a system that captures 50 images per second (50Hz) As seen in other papers as well there is a speed-accuracy trade off to make. What is more important, a lower error rate or a more responsive system?

Inspiration: Professor Andrew Duchowksi

Andrew Duchowski is one on the leading authorities on eye tracking and gaze interaction working out of the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson University (South Carolina, U.S.) Andrew is involved in organizing the annual Eye Tracking Research and Applications Symposium (ETRA) conference.

Research interests

• Visual perception and human-computer interaction.
• Computer graphics, eye tracking, virtual environments.
• Computer vision and digital imaging.
• Wavelet and multi-resolution analysis.

Andrew has published the book Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice which is one of the very few titles within the field which is especially oriented towards practical research and technical development. Well worth reading if your aiming at developing gaze driven applications (deals with algorithms, experimental setup etc)

Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice, 2nd ed.
Duchowski, A. T. (2007), Springer-Verlag, London, UK.
ISBN: 978-1-84628-808-7


Resume, talks and publications

Inspiration: Professor Rob Jacobs (Mr Midas Touch)

Rob Jacobs, currenly at Tufts University, was early on interested in gaze based interaction. Jacobs have a long list of both honors, publications and presentations in the HCI field. Being the founder of the "Midas Touch" analogy and many other fundamental aspects of gaze interaction the guy clearly deserves an introduction.


From his homepage

"Robert Jacob is a Professor of Computer Science at Tufts University, where his research interests are new interaction media and techniques and user interface software. He is currently also a visiting professor at the Universite Paris-Sud, and he was a visiting professor at the MIT Media Laboratory, in the Tangible Media Group, and continues collaboration with that group. Before coming to Tufts, he was in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Naval Research Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and he is a member of the editorial board of Human-Computer Interaction and the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. He was Papers Co-Chair of the CHI 2001 conference, Co-Chair of UIST 2007, and Vice-President of ACM SIGCHI. He was elected to the ACM CHI Academy in 2007, an honorary group of people who have made extensive contributions to the study of HCI and have led the shaping of the field."

Research topics:
Human-Computer Interaction
New Interaction Techniques and Media
Tangible User Interfaces
Virtual Environments
User Interface Software
Information Visualization

Must-read:

R.J.K. Jacob, “The Use of Eye Movements in Human-Computer Interaction Techniques: What You Look At is What You Get,” ACM Transactions on Information Systems, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 152-169 (April 1991) [link]

L.E. Sibert and R.J.K. Jacob, “Evaluation of Eye Gaze Interaction,” Proc. ACM CHI 2000 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference, pp. 281-288, Addison-Wesley/ACM Press (2000). [link]

Inspiration: Dwell-Based Pointing in Applications (Muller-Tomfelde, 2007)

While researching the optimal default value for dwell time execution I stumbled upon this paper by Christian Muller-Tomfelde at the CSIRO ICT Centre, Australia. It does not concern dwell time in the aspect of gaze based interaction but instead focuses on how we handle dwell times while pointing towards objects and conveying this reference to a communication partner. How long can this information be withheld before the interaction becomes unnatural?

Abstract
"This paper describes exploratory studies and a formal experiment that investigate a particular temporal aspect of human pointing actions. Humans can express their intentions and refer to an external entity by pointing at distant objects with their fingers or a tool. The focus of this research is on the dwell time, the time span that people remain nearly motionless during pointing at objects. We address two questions: Is there a common or natural dwell time in human pointing actions? What implications does this have for Human Computer Interaction? Especially in virtual environments, feedback about the referred object is usually provided to the user to confirm actions such as object selection. A literature review and two studies led to a formal experiment in a hand-immersive virtual environment in search for an appropriate feedback delay time for dwell-based pointing actions. The results and implications for applications for Human Computer Interaction are discussed. "

I find the part about the visual feedback experiment interesting.

"We want to test whether a variation of the delay of an explicit visual feedback for a pointing action has an effect of the perception of the interaction process. First, feedback delay time above approximately 430 ms is experienced by users to happen late. Second, for a feedback delay time above approximately 430 ms users experience waiting for feedback to happen and third, feedback delay below 430 ms is considered by users to be natural as in real life conversations. "

Questions asked:

• 1: Do you have the impression that the system feedback happened in a reasonable time according to your action? Answer: confirmation occurred too fast (1), too late (7).

• 2: Did you have the feeling to wait for the feedback to happen? Answer: no I didn’t have to wait (1), yes, I waited (7).
  
  
• 3: Did you have the impression that the time delay for the feedback was natural? (i.e., as in a real life communication situation) Answer: time delay is not natural (1), quite natural (7).
  

"This allows us to recommend a feedback delay time for manual pointing actions of approximately 350 to 600 ms as a starting point for the development of interactive applications. We have shown that this feedback delay is experienced by users as natural and convenient and that the majority of observers of pointing actions gave feedback within a similar time span."

Inspiration: All Eyes on the Monitor (Mollenbach et al, 2008)

Going further with the Zooming User Interface (ZUI) is the prototype descibed in the "All Eyes on the Monitor: Gaze Based Interaction in Zoomable, Multi-Scaled Information-Space" (E. Mollenbach, T. Stefansson, J-P Hansen) developed at the Loughborough University in the U.K and the ITU INC, Denmark. It employes the gaze based pan/zoom interaction style which is suitable for gaze interaction to resolve the inaccuracy (target sizes increase when zooming in to them) Additionally, the results indicate that for certain tasks gaze based interaction is faster than traditional mouse operation.

ABSTRACT

The experiment described in this paper, shows a test environment constructed with two information spaces; one large with 2000 nodes ordered in semi-structured groups in which participants performed search and browse tasks; the other was smaller and designed for precision zooming, where subjects performed target selection simulation tasks. For both tasks, modes of gaze- and mouse-controlled navigation were compared. The results of the browse and search tasks showed that the performances of the most efficient mouse and gaze implementations were indistinguishable. However, in the target selection simulation tasks the most efficient gaze control proved to be about 16% faster than the most efficient mouse-control. The results indicate that gaze-controlled pan/zoom navigation is a viable alternative to mouse control in inspection and target exploration of large, multi-scale environments. However, supplementing mouse control with gaze navigation also holds interesting potential for interface and interaction design. Download paper (pdf)

The paper was presented at the annual International Conference for Intelligent Interfaces (IUI) that was held in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria between 13-16th January 2008.

Talk: Sensing user attention (R. Vertegaal)

Stumbled upon a talk by Roel Vertegaal at Google Techtalk describing various projects at the Queens University Human Media Lab, many of which are using eye tracking technology. In general, applies knowledge from cognitive science on attention and communication onto practical Human-Computer Interaction interfaces applications. Overall nice 40 minute talk. Enjoy.

Abstract
Over the past few years, our work has centered around the development of computing technologies that are sensitive to what is perhaps the most important contextual cue for interacting with humans that exists: the fabric of their attention. Our research group has studied how humans communicate attention to navigate complex scenarios, such as group decision making. In the process, we developed many different prototypes of user interfaces that sense the users' attention, so as to be respectful players that share this most important resource with others. One of the most immediate methods for sensing human attention is to detect what object the eyes look at. The eye contact sensors our company has developed for this purpose work at long range, with great head movement tolerance, and many eyes. They do not require any personal calibration or coordinate system to function. Today I will announce Xuuk's first product, EyeBox2, a viewing statistics sensor that works at up to 10 meters. EyeBox2 allows the deployment of algorithms similar to Google's PageRank in the real world, where anything can now be ranked according to the attention it receives. This allows us, for example, to track mass consumer interest in products or ambient product advertisements. I will also illustrate how EyeBox2 ties into our laboratory's research on interactive technologies, showing prototypes of attention sensitive telephones, attentive video blogging glasses, speech recognition appliances as well as the world's first attentive hearing aid.


Roel Vertegaal is the director of the Human Media Lab at the Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. Roel is the founder of Xuuk which offers the EyeBox2, a remote eye tracker that works on up to 10 meters distance (currently $1500) and associated analysis software.

Inspiration: EyeWindows (Fono et al, 2005)

Continuing on the zooming style of interaction that has become common within the field of gaze interaction is the "EyeWindows: Evalutaion of Eye-Controlled Zooming Windows for Focus Selection" (Fono&Vertegaal, 2005) Their paper describes two prototypes, one media browser with dynamic (elastic) allocation of screen real estate. The second prototype is used to dynamically size desktop windows upon gaze fixation. Overall, great examples presented in a clear, well structured paper. Interesting evaluation of selection techniques.



Abstract
In this paper, we present an attentive windowing technique that uses eye tracking, rather than manual pointing, for focus window selection. We evaluated the performance of 4 focus selection techniques: eye tracking with key activation, eye tracking with automatic activation, mouse and hotkeys in a typing task with many open windows. We also evaluated a zooming windowing technique designed specifically for eye-based control, comparing its performance to that of a standard tiled windowing environment. Results indicated that eye tracking with automatic activation was, on average, about twice as fast as mouse and hotkeys. Eye tracking with key activation was about 72% faster than manual conditions, and preferred by most participants. We believe eye input performed well because it allows manual input to be provided in parallel to focus selection tasks. Results also suggested that zooming windows outperform static tiled windows by about 30%. Furthermore, this performance gain scaled with the number of windows used. We conclude that eye-controlled zooming windows with key activation provides an efficient and effective alternative to current focus window selection techniques. Download paper (pdf).

David Fono, Roel Vertegaal and Conner Dickie are researchers at the Human Media Lab at the Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Inspiration: Fisheye Lens (Ashmore et al. 2005)

In the paper "Efficient Eye Pointing with a Fisheye Lens" (Ashmore et al., 2005) the usage of a fish eye magnification lens is slaved to the foveal region of the users gaze. This is another usage of the zooming style of interaction but compared to the ZoomNavigator (Skovsgaard, 2008) and the EyePointer (Kumar&Winograd, 2007) this is a continuous effect that will magnify what ever the users gaze lands upon. In other words, it is not meant to be a solution for dealing with the low accuracy of eye trackers in typical desktop (windows) interaction. Which makes is suitable for tasks of visual inspection for quality control, medical x-ray examination, satellite images etc. On the downside the nature of the lens distorts the image which breaks the original spatial relationship between items on the display (as demonstrated by the images below)

Abstract
"This paper evaluates refinements to existing eye pointing techniques involving a fisheye lens. We use a fisheye lens and a video-based eye tracker to locally magnify the display at the point of the user’s gaze. Our gaze-contingent fisheye facilitates eye pointing and selection of magnified (expanded) targets. Two novel interaction techniques are evaluated for managing the fisheye, both dependent on real-time analysis of the user’s eye movements. Unlike previous attempts at gaze-contingent fisheye control, our key innovation is to hide the fisheye during visual search, and morph the fisheye into view as soon as the user completes a saccadic eye movement and has begun fixating a target. This style of interaction allows the user to maintain an overview of the desktop during search while selectively zooming in on the foveal region of interest during selection. Comparison of these interaction styles with ones where the fisheye is continuously slaved to the user’s gaze (omnipresent) or is not used to affect target expansion (nonexistent) shows performance benefits in terms of speed and accuracy" Download paper (pdf)

The fish eye lens has been implemented commercially into the products of Idelix Software Inc. which has a set of demonstration available.

Inspiration: GUIDe Project (Kumar&Winograd, 2007)

In the previous post I introduced the ZoomNavigator (Skovsgaard, 2008) which is similar to the EyePointer system (Kumar&Winograd, 2007) developed within the GUIDe project (Gaze-Enhaced User Interface Design) an initiative by the department for Human Computer Interaction at Stanford University. This system relies on both an eye tracker and a keyboard which excludes users with disabilities (see video below). The aim of the GUIDe is to make the whole human-computer interaction "smarter" (as in intuitive, faster & less cumbersome) This differs from the COGAIN initiative which mainly aims at giving people with disabilities a higher quality of life.

Abstract
"The GUIDe (Gaze-enhanced User Interface Design) project in the HCI Group at Stanford University explores how gaze information can be effectively used as an augmented input in addition to keyboard and mouse. We present three practical applications of gaze as an augmented input for pointing and selection, application switching, and scrolling. Our gaze-based interaction techniques do not overload the visual channel and present a natural, universally-accessible and general purpose use of gaze information to facilitate interaction with everyday computing devices." Download paper (pdf)

Demonstration video
"The following video shows a quick 5 minute overview of our work on a practical solution for pointing and selection using gaze and keyboard. Please note, our objective is not to replace the mouse as you may have seen in several articles on the Web. Our objective is to provide an effective interaction technique that makes it possible for eye-gaze to be used as a viable alternative (like the trackpad, trackball, trackpoint or other pointing techniques) for everyday pointing and selection tasks, such as surfing the web, depending on the users' abilities, tasks and preferences."

The use of "focus points" is good design decisions as it provides the users with a fixation point which is much smaller than the actual target. This provides a clear and steady fixation which is easily discriminated by the eye tracker. The idea of displaying something that will "lure" the users fixation to remain still is something I intend to explore in my own project.

As mentioned the GUIDe project has developed several applications besides the EyePoint, such as the EyeExpose (application switching), gaze-based password entry, automatic text scrolling.
More information can be found in the GUIDe Publications

Make sure to get a copy of Manu Kumars Ph.D thesis "Gaze-enhanced User Interface Design" which is pleasure to read. Additionally, Manu have founded GazeWorks a company which aims at making the technology accessible for the general public at a lower cost.

Inspiration: ZoomNavigator (Skovsgaard, 2008)

Following up on the StartGazer text entry interface presented in my previous post, another approach to using zooming interfaces is employed in the ZoomNavigator (Skovsgaard, 2008) It addresses the well known issue of using gaze as input on traditional desktop systems, namely inaccuracy and jitter. Interesting solution which relies on dwell-time execution compared to the EyePoint system (Kumar&Winograd, 2007) which is described in the next post.

Abstract
The goal of this research is to estimate the maximum amount of noise of a pointing device that still makes interaction with a Windows interface possible. This work proposes zoom as an alternative activation method to the more well-known interaction methods (dwell and two-step-dwell activation). We present a magnifier called ZoomNavigator that uses the zoom principle to interact with an interface. Selection by zooming was tested with white noise in a range of 0 to 160 pixels in radius on an eye tracker and a standard mouse. The mouse was found to be more accurate than the eye tracker. The zoom principle applied allowed successful interaction with the smallest targets found in the Windows environment even with noise up to about 80 pixels in radius. The work suggests that the zoom interaction gives the user a possibility to make corrective movement during activation time eliminating the waiting time found in all types of dwell activations. Furthermore zooming can be a promising way to compensate for inaccuracies on low-resolution eye trackers or for instance if people have problems controlling the mouse due to hand tremors.

The sequence of images are screenshots from ZoomNavigator showing
a zoom towards a Windows file called ZoomNavigator.exe.

The principles of ZoomNavigator are shown in the figure above. Zooming is used to focus on the attended object and eventually make a selection (unambiguous action). ZoomNavigator allows actions similar to those found in a conventional mouse. (Skovsgaard, 2008) The system is described in a conference paper titled "Estimating acceptable noise-levels on gaze and mouse selection by zooming" Download paper (pdf)

Two-step zoom
The two-step zoom activation is demonstrated in the video below by IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) research director prof. John Paulin Hansen. Notice how the error rate is reduced by the zooming style of interaction, making it suitable for applications with need for detailed discrimination. It might be slower but error rates drops significantly.

"Dwell is the traditional way of making selections by gaze. In the video we compare dwell to magnification and zoom. While the hit-rate is 10 % with dwell on a 12 x 12 pixels target, it is 100 % for both magnification and zoom. Magnification is a two-step process though, while zoom only takes on selection. In the experiment, the initiation of a selection is done by pressing the spacebar. Normally, the gaze tracking system will do this automatically when the gaze remains within a limited area for more than approx. 100 ms"

For more information see the publications of the ITU.

Inspiration: COGAIN

Much of the developments seen in the field of gaze interaction stems from the assistive technology field where users whom are unable to use regular computer interfaces are provided tools to empower their everyday life in a wide range of activities such as communication, entertainment, home control etc. For example they can use the eye to type words and sentences which then are synthetically translated into spoken language by software, thus enabling communication beyond blinking. A major improvement in the quality of life.

"COGAIN (Communication by Gaze Interaction) integrates cutting-edge expertise on interface technologies for the benefit of users with disabilities. COGAIN belongs to the eInclusion strategic objective of IST. COGAIN focuses on improving the quality of life for those whose life is impaired by motor-control disorders, such as ALS or CP. COGAIN assistive technologies will empower the target group to communicate by using the capabilities they have and by offering compensation for capabilities that are deteriorating. The users will be able to use applications that help them to be in control of the environment, or achieve a completely new level of convenience and speed in gaze-based communication. Using the technology developed in the network, text can be created quickly by eye typing, and it can be rendered with the user's own voice. In addition to this, the network will provide entertainment applications for making the life of the users more enjoyable and more equal. COGAIN believes that assistive technologies serve best by providing applications that are both empowering and fun to use."

A short introduction by Dr Richard Bates, a research fellow at the School of Computing Sciences at the De Montfort University in Leicester, can be downloaded either as presentation slides or paper.

The COGAIN network is a rich source of information on gaze interaction. A set of tools developed within the network has been made publicly software available for download. Make sure to check out the video demonstations of various gaze interaction tools.

Participating organizations within the COGAIN network.

Finland

University of Tampere (UTA)
Coordinator

Denmark

IT University of Copenhagen (ITU)
Vice Coordinator

Bispebjerg Hospital (BH)
Danish Centre for Assistive Technology (DC)
Risø National Laboratory (RISOE)
Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU)

Germany

Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden)
Universität Koblenz-Landau (UNI KO-LD)
Universität zu Lübeck (UzL)

Italy

Hewlett Packard Italiana SRL (HP)
Politecnico di Torino (POLITO)

Lithuania

Siauliu Universitetas (SU)

Sweden

Tobii Technology (Tobii)
Västra Götalands Läns Landsting (Sahlgrenska University Hospital) (DART)

United Kingdom

ACE Centre Advisory Trust Ltd (ACE)
The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge (UCAM)
De Montfort University (DMU)
Loughborough University (LBORO)

Japan

Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT)

Switzerland

Universität Zürich (UNIZH)

Spain

Universidad Publica de Navarra (UPNA)

Czech

Czech Technical University (CTU)

France

Metrovision (MV)

United States

LC Technologies (LC)
EyeTech Digital systems (EYETECH)

Inspiration: GazeSpace (Laqua et al. 2007)

Parallel to working on the prototypes I continuously search and review papers and thesises on gaze interaction methods / techniques, hardware and software development etc. I will post references on some of these to this blog. A great deal of research and theories on interaction / cognition lies behind the field of gaze interaction.

The paper below was presented last year on a conference held by the British Computer Society specialist group on Human Computer Interaction. Catching my attention is the focus on providing a custom content spaces (canvas), good feedback and using a dynamic dwell-time, something I intend to incorporate into my own gaze GUI components. Additionally, the idea on expanding the content canvas upon a gaze fixation is really nice and something I will attempt to do in .Net/WPF (initial work displays a set of photos that becomes enlarged upon fixation)

GazeSpace Eye Gaze Controlled Content Spaces (Laqua et al. 2007)

Abstract
In this paper, we introduce GazeSpace, a novel system utilizing eye gaze to browse content spaces. While most existing eye gaze systems are designed for medical contexts, GazeSpace is aimed at able-bodied audiences. As this target group has much higher expectations for quality of interaction and general usability, GazeSpace integrates a contextual user interface, and rich continuous feedback to the user. To cope with real-world information tasks, GazeSpace incorporates novel algorithms using a more dynamic gaze-interest threshold instead of static dwell-times. We have conducted an experiment to evaluate user satisfaction and results show that GazeSpace is easy to use and a “fun experience”. Download paper (PDF)

About the author
Sven Laqua is a PhD Student & Teaching Fellow at the Human Centred Systems Group a part of the Dept. of Computer Science at University College London. Sven has a personal homepage, university profile and a blog (rather empty at the moment)