Jason Becker: Not dead yet

Eyetribe @ CES2013

ALS patient uses his eyes to DJ New Year's Eve

Lund University HumLab eye tracking equipped classroom/lab.

What's better than an eye tracker in a lab? A room full of them! On Thursday the new eye tracking lab at Lund University HumLab was opened. It's housed in the basement of the Center of Language and Linguistics, close to the existing eye tracking lab where I did my Masters thesis on gaze interaction in 2008. The new lab is termed "the digital classroom" and features 25 eye tracking equipped computers for large studies on electronic media and education. During the last ten years the HumLab group have pursued research on the education processes, how students read educational material and how their reading style evolves during university studies. The digital classroom contains eye trackers from German manufacturer SMI (RED-M) and is co-financed by the Wallenberg foundation and Lund University for a total investment of 2.2 million SEK (US$328k). In January a new project starts that aims at improving learning in elementary and high school. Big congrats to Kenneth Holmqvist and the team. Very exciting to see the output of this!

Kenneth Holmqvist and Jana Holsanova (on the right)

By the way, I'm in the process of reading a book by the same group titled "Eye Tracking: A comprehensive guide to methods and measures". It is, by far, the most accurate, comprehensive and well-written publication on eye tracking and associated research to this date. A must-read for any serious researcher and/or developer.

Gaze-controlled drone

From Alexandre Alapetite and John Paulin Hansen, who I previously did an eye controlled robot with, comes a demo that shows gaze control of a drone. The user´s gaze is determined by an eye tracking apparatus (Alea technology) situated below the display. The drone will fly in the direction that people are looking. The operator is located near the drone. However, he could be situated anywhere, even hundreds of miles away. Gaze Controlled Flying was presented as an interactive demo at the NordiChi 2012 conference, October 16, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Cool guys!

European Conference on Eye Movements 2013 announced

The European Conference on Eye Movements 2013 will be held in Lund, Sweden, from August 11th to 16th 2013. ECEM is the largest and oldest eye tracking conference in the world. The conference webpage is now public: http://ecem2013.eye-movements.org/

Next year’s conference will include four panel discussions, 9 keynote speakers and a large number of sessions of 4 to 6 talks. We also include pre-conference methods workshops taught by top experts in the field on diverse topics related to eye movements and eye tracking, open to all researchers at every level, and to members of industry, running from the 7th to 10th August. You can see a list of these topics and the teachers here: http://ecem2013.eye-movements.org/workshops.

Important dates include the following:

• Oct 15, 2012: Submission of proposals and abstracts will open.
•  Jan 15, 2013: Deadline for proposals for symposia.
• Feb 25, 2013: Notification on acceptance for symposia.
• March 1, 2013: Deadline for 2-page extended abstract for talks and 200 word abstracts for posters.
• April 1, 2013: Registration opens.
• April 15, 2013: Notification on acceptance for talks and posters.
• May 1, 2013: Last day for reduced registration fee.

Organising committee

• Conference Chairs: Kenneth Holmqvist and Arantxa Villanueva
• Conference Organiser: Fiona Mulvey
• Scientific Board: Halzska Jarodzka, Ignace Hooge, Rudolf Groner and Päivi Majaranta
• Exhibition Chairs: John Paulin Hansen and Richard Andersson
• Method Workshop Organisers: Marcus Nyström and Dan Witzner Hansen
• Web Masters: Nils Holmberg and Detlev Droege
• Proceedings Editors: Roger Johansson and Richard Dewhurst
• Registration Managers: Kerstin Gidlöf and Linnéa Larsson
• Student Volunteer Managers: Linnéa Larsson, Richard Dewhurst and Kerstin Gidlöf
• Social Program Organisers: Richard Andersson, Jana Holsanova and Kerstin Gidlöf

Contact

• Conference chairs and organiser: management at/på/an ecem2013.eye-movements.org
• Exhibition: exhibition at/på/an ecem2013.eye-movements.org
• Method workshops: workshops at/på/an ecem2013.eye-movements.org
• The web page: webmaster at/på/an ecem2013.eye-movements.org

Fujitsu tablet and monitor

Today the first public demonstrations of the Fujitsu/Docomo/Tobii tablet came online, all from the CEATEC 2012 expo in Japan. The prototype tablet, called iBeam, is designed by Fujitsu for Docomo and contains an eye tracking module from Swedish Tobii, namely the IS-20 which was introduced earlier this year. The form factor appears a bit on the large size with a bump towards the edge where the eye tracking module is placed, sort of looks like a tablet inside another case. On the software side the tablet is running Android where a gaze marker is overlaid on the interface. Selection is performed using simple dwell activation which is known for being both stressful and error-prone. The sample apps contains the usual suspects, panning of photos and maps, scrolling browser and image viewer. Pretty neat for a prototype.

Fujitsu also demonstrated a LCD monitor with an eye tracking camera system embedded while the actual gaze estimation algorithms are running on an embedded Windows computer. This display is not using the Tobii IS20 but a system developed by Fujitsu themselves which is stated to be low-cost. Question is why they didn't use this for the tablet. From what I can tell it does not provide the same level of accuracy, it appears to be a rough up/down, left/right type of gaze estimation which explains why the demo apps only handles panning of maps and images.

Panasonic in-flight eye control demo

From the APEX 2012 here's a video where Steve Sizelove from Panasonic demonstrates their eye and gesture control systems for future in-flight entertainment systems. Even if this is a futuristic concept it is clear that Panasonic is pushing the envelope on in-flight systems. Their X-series system is state-of-the-art, just take a look at the upcoming eX3, a touch-enabled Android platform with an associated app store, support for the Unity 3D engine, fast internet etc. Great stuff for those transatlantic flights that seem to take forever.

Tough decisions, big plans and a bright future

Browsed through my blog today. Realized I hadn't written much about what I've been up to. There's been a reason for that. One year ago I left my position at Duke University. It wasn't an easy decision. The Radiology eye tracking project I was involved with (and still is) was making good progress. I had been working long days since it started at Stanford in 2009 and we were doing pretty neat stuff with volumetric medical image datasets. 

The Stanford/Duke Radiology eye tracking project and our novel approach to volumetric gaze data.

At the same time I spent nights and weekends working on the open source ITU Gaze Tracker together with Javier San Agustin. Somewhere I always had the feeling that we should get back together, great things just seemed to happen when we did. So after my grand tour of the US and countless Skype meetings over six months we had a plan. The four former PhD students from the ITU Gazegroup was to start an eye tracking company. At first we called it Senseye but later changed it to The Eye Tribe due to trademark issues. 

The Eye Tribe as of Spring 2012 at the US embassy reception. 

We decided early not to go for the established market. It's a red sea with a couple of fairly big players that have been working on their high tech creations for years, it's a low volume/high margin game with intricate and expensive solutions primarily for the research and disabled markets. 

The Eye Tribe intends to innovate and disrupt by bringing eye tracking to post-pc devices in the consumer market. It just doesn't happen with devices that costs several thousand dollars.  

After twelve months of executing our plan we recently raised funds from a group of European investors to accelerate (as covered by The Next Web). The team has grown and we are looking to make additional hires in a near future. Perhaps you would like join the tribe and be part of something great? There's some very interesting things happening in a near future, for the skilled it's always best to get on early.

One year ago I traded a warm North Carolina for a cold Copenhagen, a relationship for loneliness, a big house for a small apartment and a sport car for a bicycle. Time will tell if that was the right thing to do, with big plans, full commitment and funding in place, it is so far, so good.

What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.

Today marks a historic day as the ITU GazeGroup.org open source Gaze Tracker has been downloaded over 30,000 times. Although the current version was released in October 2010 we're still seeing approximately 1000 downloads per month. We're really happy to see how widely distributed it has become, reaching all corners of the planet. When we released the first version, back in 2009, we had no idea it would reach distant places such as Kyrgyzstan, Suriname or Burkina Faso. The objective was, and still is, to "democratize and provide access to eye tracking technology regardless of means or nationality". This milestone is an achievement that I'd like to thank everyone involved for.

Top 10 Countries
10. Brazil 720  
9. Denmark 803  
8. France 865  
7. China 888  
6. India 1,063  
5. Italy 1,170  
4. Japan 1,226  
3. United Kingdom 1,359  
2. Germany 2,266  
1. United States 4,647

Top 10 total: 15,007 (50%) Full stats.