Support : eNewsletters : Eye on Innovation : Issue 1, February 2013

Innovation expands eye tracking technology—the future is here!

Two neighbors, Bill, a former orthopedic surgeon suffering from a stroke, and Jack, an academic dean with a neurodegenerative disease, looked for ways to communicate with each other. The stroke had left Bill with only the ability to repeat individual words and Jack with garbled, almost unintelligible, speech. Their motor skills had also been affected. These two friends who once sat in the New Mexico sun and talked non-stop, now could not communicate. Because of their disabilities, they could not operate their computers with a mouse nor use voice recognition software either. How would they talk to each other? How would they fill their time now after the full lives they had led?

Congenital disabilities, such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, traumatic injuries like Christopher Reeves' affliction when he fell from his horse, an automobile accident, an amputation, or a degenerative disease, including Parkinson's, ALS, multiple sclerosis or a stroke, can inhibit or prohibit use of arms, hands, and even speech, thus preventing individuals from using a computer without assistive technology.

Mouth sticks, head wands, sip and puff switches, and eye tracking are just some of the assistive devices developed for individuals with disabilities. These alternative input devices allow individuals to control computers through means other than a standard keyboard, and they offer children and adults a degree of independence they would otherwise not have, a lifeline to the world to read news, research areas of interest, purchase items, or communicate with friends or family, any time of the day or night.

This issue of Eye on Innovation explores one of these assistive technologies—eye tracking. ProQuest Dialog illustrates the power of multidisciplinary searching and bringing together technical and trade information to understand the landscape. Technical databases provide background on how these devices work and a variety of new uses including helping the disabled. Trade literature databases (coming to ProQuest Dialog later in 2013) identify companies involved in this technology worldwide.

Controlling the computer through eye movement
Eye tracking devices have become more sophisticated and can be a powerful alternative for individuals with no control, or only limited control, over their hand movements, as well as those who have speech difficulties. The device follows the movement of the eyes and enables the person to navigate through the web with only eye movements. Because eyes move in tandem, calibration only needs to be done for one eye. The technique is able to cope with blinking, head movements, dim light, glasses and contact lenses.

Special software enables a person to type, and may include word-completion technology to speed up the process. Thousands of paralyzed people operate computers and wheelchairs using eye trackers. It is useful for these individuals because most survivors of spinal injuries and neuromuscular diseases retain control of their eyes. The systems can be expensive—usually in the thousands of U.S. dollars—so they are not as common as the less sophisticated devices, such as mouth sticks and head wands.

There are two main types of eye tracker. Charting someone's gaze as they use a computer screen or watch television can be done using an eye tracker aimed at the user from as far as two meters away. Tracking someone's gaze as they move around is more difficult. A special headset is needed, with an eye tracker pointing towards the wearer's eyes, and an extra video camera facing forward to record what the person is seeing. The output from the eye tracker is then used to superimpose a mark on the video from this camera, to show what the wearer was looking at.

Credit: Universal Access in the Information Society from SciSearch
Photo credit: Public Domain

A lifeline for the disabled
In July 2012, researchers from the Imperial College in London presented a unique and affordable device made up of two video game console cameras attached to a pair of glasses. The total cost for the equipment was 40 GBP. The cameras constantly take pictures of the eye, working out where the pupil is pointing and researchers then set calibrations to determine exactly where a person is looking on the computer screen. They were also able to calibrate how far into the distance users were looking. The system also allows users to click on an item on the screen by winking, instead of using a mouse button. This costeffective eye-tracking device could enable millions suffering from nerve degenerative diseases, as well as amputees, to interact with their computers and surroundings using simple eye movements. A demonstration of this new device has been published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Neuroscience.

Eye tracking could become a widely used input technology for the able-bodied too. Moving an on-screen cursor with a glance is much faster than using a mouse. Tobii Assistive Technology Inc., a Swedish global leader in eyetracking-enabled communication and assistive technology devices, is working with console-makers and video-game publishers to develop new markets for its technology. Their recent innovation Communicator Four allows users to type words and phrases with their eyes, and communicate to nearby caregivers via a screen reader or Skype chat.

Credit: Journal of Neural Engineering from Gale Group Health & Wellness Database, The Economist, BusinessWire
Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported by Tobii

Writing with the eyes
A French scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research studying optical illusions discovered a way that people can write with their eyes in cursive script on a computer monitor—an innovation that could help severely disabled people communicate more freely, and potentially lead to visual-control systems for pilots, drivers and surgeons. With eye-tracking headwear or electrodes, eye movements can be used to guide a computer cursor, pick out control characters on a screen or compose messages by selecting letters one at a time. Test subjects wore a small infrared video camera to relay their eye movements to the computer screen. While still in its early stages, the technique can enable a person to produce legible script on a computer screen at a rate of 20-30 characters per minute, after a few 30-minute training sessions.

Credit: Current Biology

New innovative applications

The main use of eye tracking has typically been in design and marketing. For example, a few dozen viewers of an advertisement, website or product design can reveal exactly what looks good and what does not. Software sold by iMotions, a Danish firm, creates color-coded maps that show where gazes move smoothly, linger, or go back and forth in frustration. Such “heat maps” can reveal more about how well an advertisement will work than asking people to express themselves in words. In Vivo BVA, a marketing consultancy based in Paris, uses eye tracking to determine exactly which elements on packaging attract or repel shoppers. A pair of glasses records the wearer's eye movements, mapping places where the wearer's gaze lingers with pleasure, jerks back and forth in confusion, or fails to look at all.

The cost of eye-tracking equipment has fallen in recent years and its accuracy has risen. The cost of headset eye trackers has fallen from around $30,000 a decade ago to a bit less than $15,000 today. Fixed eye trackers used in conjunction with computer screens cost less than $5,000. Tobii Technology indicates the price of these high-end devices will soon fall to below $3,000.

Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Non-handicapped uses grow
As a result of lower cost, the technology has found a range of new uses. The technology is being used to alert drowsy drivers, diagnose brain trauma, train machine operators and provide surgeons with “a third hand” to control robotic equipment. And, costs are falling so quickly that consumer use of the technology may not be far off. Haier, a Chinese maker of household appliances, recently unveiled a prototype TV controlled by a viewer's gaze. Eye tracking may also find use in desktop computers, video-games consoles and e-readers. Tobii Technology received four “Best of Show” honors from top industry media organizations during the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) for the introduction of Tobii REX, the company's new computer gaze interaction computer peripheral for the consumer market. Tobii expects to make 5,000 Tobii REX peripherals available for consumer purchase by Fall 2013.

Credit: Gale Group PROMT®, BusinessWire
Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Further uses
Eye tracking could become a widely used input technology for the able-bodied too. Moving an on-screen cursor with a glance is much faster than using a mouse. Tobii is working with console-makers and videogame publishers to develop new markets for its technology. The Gaze Group, a research center at the IT University of Copenhagen, is developing eye-tracking software for Android, the leading smart phone operating system. More than 30,000 people have downloaded the Gaze Group's software, which supports eye-tracking using relatively inexpensive night-vision cameras. Lenovo, a Chinese PC-maker, has made 20 prototype laptops with Tobii eye trackers built into the top of the lid. The Eye Tribe, a startup based in Copenhagen, has modified a tablet computer so that it can be controlled using eye movements.

Accident prevention. Eye tracking can also keep an eye on drivers and fatigue they might experience.

• An “attention monitoring” system based on eye tracking, pioneered by Toyota sounds a warning if an eyelid droops, blinking speed slows, the shifting of the driver's gaze becomes sluggish or his head tips forward.
• Six Safety Systems, a Canadian firm, will begin installing similar drowsiness-detection technology in vehicles operated by three big mining and drilling companies. The system, called LUCI™, calculates the driver's alertness score and sounds an alarm if it slips to a dangerous level. At more than $15,000 per vehicle, LUCI is not cheap. The firm notes that for one of its customers, driver fatigue causes about half of all vehicle accidents—and an hour of downtime for a single mining vehicle costs about $57,000 in lost production.

• A team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology recorded eye movement of novice and experienced drivers wearing head cameras as they approached a bend in a narrow road. The eye movement numbers show where the eye gaze focused for the novice and experienced drivers in this dangerous driving situation.
• Eye-Com Corporation, based in Reno, Nevada, has designed an eye-tracking scuba mask for Navy SEALs that detects fatigue, levels of blood oxygen and nitrogen narcosis, a form of inebriation often experienced on deep dives.
• EyeTracking, based in San Diego, has developed software that determines whether circular or radial muscles in the iris are opening or closing the pupil. Radial muscles take over as stress and brain effort increase. Because a novice's brain has to work harder than an expert's to perform a given task, this offers a way to measure a person's level of expertise. EyeTracking's technology is being used by two American university hospitals to determine when urology surgeons are ready to leave training programs.

Military aids. Eye tracking has military applications too.

• American flight instructors are using eye-tracking gear provided by Polhemus, a firm based in Vermont, to monitor the eye movements of pilots in flight simulators. The equipment can reveal whether trainees are scanning gauges in the right sequence, or skipping one altogether.
• SBG Labs, a Silicon Valley defense contractor, is developing a gaze-controlled targeting weapons system for the U.S. Air Force.
• ISCAN, a firm based in Woburn, Massachusetts, has built a weapon system in which a small drone is wirelessly controlled by an eye-tracking headset. Fitted with explosives, the eye-tracking drone can then act as a smart missile that can be sent to blow up whatever the wearer is looking at.

What's next?

Eye tracking and offshoots of the technology offer an exciting glimpse of future possibilities. Innovations in marketing, the military, the transportation industry and especially for the disabled continue to expand. Companies worldwide are finding new uses for this technology and decreasing the cost at the same time.

Optical control of hoists, beds, blinds, kitchen and entertainment equipment offer more independence for the disabled, their caregivers and for family life. For Bill and Jack, two neighbors who just want to communicate—the cost will be affordable and their future has expanded immensely.

top of page