NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR EYE CONTROL
NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR EYE CONTROL If you really want to add eye tracking to your application, there are many new technologies floating around that can potentially do the job. The Eye Tribe hardware, for example, lets you become a hands-free master of Fruit Ninja, while software solutions like Senseye are ideal for phones or tablets. Unfortunately, if the only thing you can move is your eyes, none of these options would work very well.
For people who have diseases like ALS, or are otherwise “locked-in,” eye control is their only real option for interaction with a computer and with their world. A group of engineers from Tel Aviv has recently built an inexpensive wearable called EyeControl that tracks the pupil and translates blinks and movements into commands. Their infrared camera mounts unobtrusively below the eye and does not interfere with normal vision.
The beauty of their new Eye-control device is that it pretty much works right out of the box. You just put the glasses on and the system will then go through a quick auto-calibration. As long as you and your audience are fluent in English or Hebrew you will be good to go. One concern particularly with ALS is that eventually even the eyes are affected. For example, in the later stages of the disease, the oculomotor nerve that controls certain kinds of eye movements begins to be compromised.
However, for the most part the deficits in eye movements for early stage ALS patients shouldn’t be a problem. Although they can have trouble with generating voluntary fast movements or in engaging in smooth pursuit and convergence movements, their generally slower saccades might be advantageous for the function of the device.
Eye Control
Unveiled at the BrainTech Israel conference in March and developed by Hello World, Eye-control uses mobile phone technology to provide a cheap - and perhaps more importantly, easily portable - communication system for locked-in patients. A simple pair of glasses is equipped with an infra-red camera which captures eye movements and sends the signal to a handheld device the size of a mobile phone. An app then translates those eye movements into text and speech.
Eye Control is self-calibrated; this means that once the system is set up, the user requires no further assistance, allowing locked-in people unprecedented levels of freedom and independence.
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