The control of computer functions by eye movements was demonstrated in 14 normal volunteers. Elec... more The control of computer functions by eye movements was demonstrated in 14 normal volunteers. Electrical Ž . potentials recorded by horizontal and vertical electrooculography EOG were transformed into a cursor that represented a moving fixation point on a computer display. Subjects were able to spell words and sentences by using eye movements to place the cursor on target letters in the display of an alphabet matrix. The successful demonstration of computer-controlled syntactic construction by eye movements offers a potentially useful technique for computer-assisted communication in special groups, such as developmentally-disabled individuals who have motor paralysis and who cannot speak. ᮊ
Two video-based human-computer interaction tools are introduced that can activate a binary switch... more Two video-based human-computer interaction tools are introduced that can activate a binary switch and issue a selection command. "BlinkLink," as the first tool is called, automatically detects a user's eye blinks and accurately measures their durations. The system is intended to provide an alternate input modality to allow people with severe disabilities to access a computer. Voluntary long blinks trigger mouse clicks, while involuntary short blinks are ignored. The system enables communication using "blink patterns:" sequences of long and short blinks which are interpreted as semiotic messages. The second tool, "EyebrowClicker," automatically detects when a user raises his or her eyebrows and then triggers a mouse click. Both systems can initialize themselves, track the eyes at frame rate, and recover in the event of errors. No special lighting is required. The systems have been tested with interactive games and a spelling program. Results demonstrate overall detection accuracy of 95.6% for BlinkLink and 89.0% for Eye-browClicker.
The "Camera Mouse" system has been developed to provide computer access for people with severe di... more The "Camera Mouse" system has been developed to provide computer access for people with severe disabilities. The system tracks the computer user's movements with a video camera and translates them into the movements of the mouse pointer on the screen. Body features such as the tip of the user's nose or finger can be tracked. The visual tracking algorithm is based on cropping an online template of the tracked feature from the current image frame and testing where this template correlates in the subsequent frame. The location of the highest correlation is interpreted as the new location of the feature in the subsequent frame. Various body features are examined for tracking robustness and user convenience. A group of 20 people without disabilities tested the Camera Mouse and quickly learned how to use it to spell out messages or play games. Twelve people with severe cerebral palsy or traumatic brain injury have tried the system, nine of whom have shown success. They interacted with their environment by spelling out messages and exploring the Internet.
Single switch scanning is the access method of last resort for powered wheelchairs, primarily bec... more Single switch scanning is the access method of last resort for powered wheelchairs, primarily because drift is a significant problem. To correct a drift to the left or the right, the user must stop going forward, wait for the scanning device to get to the arrow for the direction of choice, click to turn the chair, stop turning, wait to scan to forward and then click to move forward again. Robotic assisted control can improve the ease and speed of driving using single switch scanning. Under robotic control, sensors are used to correct the drift problem and to avoid obstacles. The user is only required to give commands to change direction, for example "left" at an intersection.
A human-computer interface (HCI) system called "The Camera Mouse" is evaluated. It tracks a user'... more A human-computer interface (HCI) system called "The Camera Mouse" is evaluated. It tracks a user's movements with a video camera and translates them to movements of the mouse pointer on the screen [1]. The main objectives for the experimentation were to quantitatively define the performance of the system for different users, features, and applications, to determine the optimal settings for different kinds of users, and to compare measurements over all users in order to suggest enhancements to a future system of this type. The experiments were conducted with 11 participants including a subject with severe physical disabilities. Each subject repeatedly performed a number of tasks. During each trial, a different feature was tracked and the elapsed time and mouse movement trajectories were measured. These measurements were used to quantify the system's performance.
Psychology [Miller 6, Suppes 561. There is, of course, a vast literature on pattern recognition [... more Psychology [Miller 6, Suppes 561. There is, of course, a vast literature on pattern recognition [Uhr 661, but it has been exclusively concerned with pattern descriptions which are structurally simpler than grammars.
Just as there are symbolic thinkers, people who think mainly in terms of letters and numbers and ... more Just as there are symbolic thinkers, people who think mainly in terms of letters and numbers and other symbols, and visual thinkers, people who think primarily in terms of shapes and colors and spatial relationships, there can be symbolic computations and visual computations.
Many people with disabilities do not have the dexterity necessary to control a joystick on an ele... more Many people with disabilities do not have the dexterity necessary to control a joystick on an electric wheelchair. Our system allows a semiautonomous robotic wheelchair to be commanded by head and eye movement using electrodes placed around the eyes. Once the user issues a high level command such as "forward," the wheelchair system will perform the command while avoiding obstacles and taking care of any necessary driving adjustments.
How is our gaze dispersed across the screen when watching television? An exploratory eyetracker s... more How is our gaze dispersed across the screen when watching television? An exploratory eyetracker study with a custom-designed show indicated a very strong center-of-screen bias with gaze points following a roughly normal distribution peaked near screen center. Examining the show across time revealed that people were rarely all looking at the same location, and the amount of gaze dispersion within frames was highly variable. Different forms of programming yielded different levels of dispersion: static network`bumpers' created the tightest visual groupings, and gaze dispersion for frames with show content was less than the dispersion for commercials. Advertising frames with brand logos generated higher dispersion than the non-branded advertisement portions, and repeated advertisements generated higher dispersion than their first-run counterparts.
Back in 1993 colleagues and I at Boston College invented a technology called EagleEyes. EagleEyes... more Back in 1993 colleagues and I at Boston College invented a technology called EagleEyes. EagleEyes allows you to control the mouse pointer on a computer screen by moving your eyes. EagleEyes works through five electrodes placed on your face, around the eyes.
This research explores how fast-forwarding through commercials alters the visual attention of vie... more This research explores how fast-forwarding through commercials alters the visual attention of viewers and how marketers can tailor advertisements to retain effectiveness as digital video recorder usage rises. Building on prior work in visual marketing and perceptual psychology, the authors conduct two eye-tracker studies that show how fast-forwarding viewers pay more attention during commercials, but their attention is heavily limited to the center of the screen. Fast-forwarded advertisements containing brand information at screen center still create brand memory even with a 95% reduction in frames and complete loss of audio, whereas advertisements with brand information located elsewhere are of virtually no value. A third study shows that fast-forwarded commercials containing extensive central brand information can positively affect brand attitude, behavioral intent, and even actual choice behavior. These findings show that marketers can counteract the negative effects of digital video recorders by ensuring that their advertisements are heavily branded and that the branding is centrally located.
A system has been developed that uses a camera to visually track the tip of the nose or the tip o... more A system has been developed that uses a camera to visually track the tip of the nose or the tip of a finger or some other selected feature of the body and moves the mouse pointer on the screen accordingly. People without disabilities quickly learn to use the system to spell out messages or play games. People with severe cerebral palsy have tried the system with some initial success. Our goal is to provide computer access to people who are quadriplegic and cannot speak by developing computer vision systems.
In response to the desire of young people with severe physical disabilities to access the web and... more In response to the desire of young people with severe physical disabilities to access the web and their difficulty in using existing browsers with eye and head control access technologies, a new browser, called WebForward, was developed. The problems encountered using traditional browsers are reported as are the features of WebForward designed to overcome the problems. The browser has been used extensively by seven people with severe physical disabilities.
The control of computer functions by eye movements was demonstrated in 14 normal volunteers. Elec... more The control of computer functions by eye movements was demonstrated in 14 normal volunteers. Electrical Ž . potentials recorded by horizontal and vertical electrooculography EOG were transformed into a cursor that represented a moving fixation point on a computer display. Subjects were able to spell words and sentences by using eye movements to place the cursor on target letters in the display of an alphabet matrix. The successful demonstration of computer-controlled syntactic construction by eye movements offers a potentially useful technique for computer-assisted communication in special groups, such as developmentally-disabled individuals who have motor paralysis and who cannot speak. ᮊ
Two video-based human-computer interaction tools are introduced that can activate a binary switch... more Two video-based human-computer interaction tools are introduced that can activate a binary switch and issue a selection command. "BlinkLink," as the first tool is called, automatically detects a user's eye blinks and accurately measures their durations. The system is intended to provide an alternate input modality to allow people with severe disabilities to access a computer. Voluntary long blinks trigger mouse clicks, while involuntary short blinks are ignored. The system enables communication using "blink patterns:" sequences of long and short blinks which are interpreted as semiotic messages. The second tool, "EyebrowClicker," automatically detects when a user raises his or her eyebrows and then triggers a mouse click. Both systems can initialize themselves, track the eyes at frame rate, and recover in the event of errors. No special lighting is required. The systems have been tested with interactive games and a spelling program. Results demonstrate overall detection accuracy of 95.6% for BlinkLink and 89.0% for Eye-browClicker.
The "Camera Mouse" system has been developed to provide computer access for people with severe di... more The "Camera Mouse" system has been developed to provide computer access for people with severe disabilities. The system tracks the computer user's movements with a video camera and translates them into the movements of the mouse pointer on the screen. Body features such as the tip of the user's nose or finger can be tracked. The visual tracking algorithm is based on cropping an online template of the tracked feature from the current image frame and testing where this template correlates in the subsequent frame. The location of the highest correlation is interpreted as the new location of the feature in the subsequent frame. Various body features are examined for tracking robustness and user convenience. A group of 20 people without disabilities tested the Camera Mouse and quickly learned how to use it to spell out messages or play games. Twelve people with severe cerebral palsy or traumatic brain injury have tried the system, nine of whom have shown success. They interacted with their environment by spelling out messages and exploring the Internet.
Single switch scanning is the access method of last resort for powered wheelchairs, primarily bec... more Single switch scanning is the access method of last resort for powered wheelchairs, primarily because drift is a significant problem. To correct a drift to the left or the right, the user must stop going forward, wait for the scanning device to get to the arrow for the direction of choice, click to turn the chair, stop turning, wait to scan to forward and then click to move forward again. Robotic assisted control can improve the ease and speed of driving using single switch scanning. Under robotic control, sensors are used to correct the drift problem and to avoid obstacles. The user is only required to give commands to change direction, for example "left" at an intersection.
A human-computer interface (HCI) system called "The Camera Mouse" is evaluated. It tracks a user'... more A human-computer interface (HCI) system called "The Camera Mouse" is evaluated. It tracks a user's movements with a video camera and translates them to movements of the mouse pointer on the screen [1]. The main objectives for the experimentation were to quantitatively define the performance of the system for different users, features, and applications, to determine the optimal settings for different kinds of users, and to compare measurements over all users in order to suggest enhancements to a future system of this type. The experiments were conducted with 11 participants including a subject with severe physical disabilities. Each subject repeatedly performed a number of tasks. During each trial, a different feature was tracked and the elapsed time and mouse movement trajectories were measured. These measurements were used to quantify the system's performance.
Psychology [Miller 6, Suppes 561. There is, of course, a vast literature on pattern recognition [... more Psychology [Miller 6, Suppes 561. There is, of course, a vast literature on pattern recognition [Uhr 661, but it has been exclusively concerned with pattern descriptions which are structurally simpler than grammars.
Just as there are symbolic thinkers, people who think mainly in terms of letters and numbers and ... more Just as there are symbolic thinkers, people who think mainly in terms of letters and numbers and other symbols, and visual thinkers, people who think primarily in terms of shapes and colors and spatial relationships, there can be symbolic computations and visual computations.
Many people with disabilities do not have the dexterity necessary to control a joystick on an ele... more Many people with disabilities do not have the dexterity necessary to control a joystick on an electric wheelchair. Our system allows a semiautonomous robotic wheelchair to be commanded by head and eye movement using electrodes placed around the eyes. Once the user issues a high level command such as "forward," the wheelchair system will perform the command while avoiding obstacles and taking care of any necessary driving adjustments.
How is our gaze dispersed across the screen when watching television? An exploratory eyetracker s... more How is our gaze dispersed across the screen when watching television? An exploratory eyetracker study with a custom-designed show indicated a very strong center-of-screen bias with gaze points following a roughly normal distribution peaked near screen center. Examining the show across time revealed that people were rarely all looking at the same location, and the amount of gaze dispersion within frames was highly variable. Different forms of programming yielded different levels of dispersion: static network`bumpers' created the tightest visual groupings, and gaze dispersion for frames with show content was less than the dispersion for commercials. Advertising frames with brand logos generated higher dispersion than the non-branded advertisement portions, and repeated advertisements generated higher dispersion than their first-run counterparts.
Back in 1993 colleagues and I at Boston College invented a technology called EagleEyes. EagleEyes... more Back in 1993 colleagues and I at Boston College invented a technology called EagleEyes. EagleEyes allows you to control the mouse pointer on a computer screen by moving your eyes. EagleEyes works through five electrodes placed on your face, around the eyes.
This research explores how fast-forwarding through commercials alters the visual attention of vie... more This research explores how fast-forwarding through commercials alters the visual attention of viewers and how marketers can tailor advertisements to retain effectiveness as digital video recorder usage rises. Building on prior work in visual marketing and perceptual psychology, the authors conduct two eye-tracker studies that show how fast-forwarding viewers pay more attention during commercials, but their attention is heavily limited to the center of the screen. Fast-forwarded advertisements containing brand information at screen center still create brand memory even with a 95% reduction in frames and complete loss of audio, whereas advertisements with brand information located elsewhere are of virtually no value. A third study shows that fast-forwarded commercials containing extensive central brand information can positively affect brand attitude, behavioral intent, and even actual choice behavior. These findings show that marketers can counteract the negative effects of digital video recorders by ensuring that their advertisements are heavily branded and that the branding is centrally located.
A system has been developed that uses a camera to visually track the tip of the nose or the tip o... more A system has been developed that uses a camera to visually track the tip of the nose or the tip of a finger or some other selected feature of the body and moves the mouse pointer on the screen accordingly. People without disabilities quickly learn to use the system to spell out messages or play games. People with severe cerebral palsy have tried the system with some initial success. Our goal is to provide computer access to people who are quadriplegic and cannot speak by developing computer vision systems.
In response to the desire of young people with severe physical disabilities to access the web and... more In response to the desire of young people with severe physical disabilities to access the web and their difficulty in using existing browsers with eye and head control access technologies, a new browser, called WebForward, was developed. The problems encountered using traditional browsers are reported as are the features of WebForward designed to overcome the problems. The browser has been used extensively by seven people with severe physical disabilities.
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