man cognition depends primarily on the ability to perceive,
interpret, and integrate audio-visuals and sensoring information. Adding
extraordinary perceptual abilities to computers would enable computers to work
together with human beings as intimate partners.
Researchers are attempting to add more capabilities to computers that
will allow them to interact like humans, recognize human presents, talk,
listen, or even guess their feelings. The BLUE EYES technology aims at creating
computational machines that have perceptual and sensory ability like those of
human beings. It uses non-obtrusige sensing method, employing most modern video
cameras and microphones to identifies the users actions through the use of
imparted sensory abilities . The machine can understand what a user wants,
where he is looking at, and even realize his physical or emotional states.
A researcher at Stanford has
created an alternative to the mouse that allows a person using a computer to
click links, highlight text, and scroll simply by looking at the screen and
tapping a key on the keyboard. By using standard eye-tracking hardware--a
specialized computer screen with a high-definition camera and infrared
lights--Manu Kumar, a doctoral student who works with computer-science
professor Terry Winograd, has developed a novel user interface that is easy to
operate.
"Eye-tracking
technology was developed for disabled users," Kumar explains, "but
the work that we're doing here is trying to get it to a point where it becomes
more useful for able-bodied users." He says that nondisabled users tend to
have a higher standard for easy-to-use interfaces, and previously, eye-tracking
technology that disabled people use hasn't appealed to them.
At the heart
of Kumar's technology is software called EyePoint that works with standard
eye-tracking hardware. The software uses an approach that requires that a
person look at a Web link, for instance, and hold a "hot key" on the
keyboard (usually found on the number pad on the right) as she is looking. The
area of the screen that's being looked at becomes magnified. Then, the person
pinpoints her focus within the magnified region and releases the hot key,
effectively clicking through to the link.
Kumar's
approach could take eye-tracking user interfaces in the right direction.
Instead of designing a common type of gaze-based interface that is controlled
completely by the eyes--for instance, a system in which a user gazes at a given
link, then blinks in order to click through--he has involved the hand, which
makes the interaction more natural. "He's got the right idea to let the
eye augment the hand," says Robert Jacob, professor of computer science at
Tufts University, in Medford, MA.
Rudimentary
eye-tracking technology dates back to the early 1900s. Using photographic film,
researchers captured reflected light from subjects' eyes and used the
information to study how people read and look at pictures. But today's technology
involves a high-resolution camera and a series of infrared light-emitting
diodes. This hardware is embedded into the bezel of expensive monitors; the one
Kumar uses cost $25,000. The camera picks up the movement of the pupil and the
reflection of the infrared light off the cornea, which is used as a reference
point because it doesn't move.
Even the
best eye tracker isn't perfect, however. "The eye is not really very
stable," says Kumar. Even when a person is fixated on a point, the pupil
jitters. So he wrote an algorithm that allows the computer to smooth out the
eye jitters in real time. The rest of the research, says Kumar, involves
studying how people look at a screen and figuring out a way to build an
interface that "does not overload the visual channel." In other
words, he wanted to make its use feel natural to the user.
One of the
important features of the interface, says Kumar, is that it works without a
person needing to control a cursor. Unlike the mouse-based system in ubiquitous
use today, EyePoint provides no feedback on where a person is looking. Previous
studies have shown that it is distracting to a person when she is aware of her
gaze because she consciously tries to control its location. In the usability
studies that Kumar conducted, he found that people's performance dropped when
he implemented a blue dot that followed their eyes.
