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From: marsh@thelonius.mitre.org (Ralph Marshall 617 271-8784)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: Eye Movement Tracker
Message-ID: <1991Jun14.192945.16681@linus.mitre.org>
Date: 14 Jun 91 19:29:45 GMT
Article-I.D.: linus.1991Jun14.192945.16681
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In article <164661@felix.UUCP> asylvain@felix.UUCP (Alvin "the Chipmunk" Sylvain) writes:
>How about tossing that old mouse into the trash can, and construct a
>device which looks into your eyes while you're reading the screen, and
>can actually track the precise location of what you're looking at?
>
>Rather than "clicking" a mouse, you just touch a button when you want to
>select the word or screen-button that's in your current "gaze."  Natur-
>ally, a cursor follows your gaze around the screen, and touching the
>button flashes the cursor (or inverts the screen button, whatever) for
>immediate feedback.
>
>Such devices already exist, but they require physical contact with the
>eyeball.  This is undesireable (at least to me!)

The problem is only partly with the fact that existing devices for
tracking your eyes are cumbersome and unpleasant to use.  There are
reasonable systems that track your eyes visually using cameras and
simple image recognition, but they still require that you keep your
head in a 1' cubic area.

The bigger problem is that you don't really look at things the way you
think you do.  First of all, blinking can be a problem, but bigger
problems come from the fact that your eye doesn't stay fixed on any
one place.  It moves about very rapidly, and only generally stays in
the area that you think you're looking directly at.  It also jumps
when you move to look at another area, and takes a fairly long period
of time to settle down at the new position.

So, you can't just replace the current pointing device with an eye
tracker, even if it could track your eye perfectly.  You need a new
model of how to determine the "selected area" based on the raw eye
position values, and this work needs more research into how people
really see things.

--
Ralph Marshall (marsh@linus.mitre.org)
Disclaimer:  Often wrong but never in doubt...
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