Tzu-hui Wu (Editor: Nancy Stubbs)

The Eye Mouse offers people with extreme disabilities the opportunity to control a computer simply by moving his or her eyes or head. Computers are generally controlled by hand, using a keyboard, a mouse, or a trackball. Many people who are unable to use their hands are thus disenfranchised from using this equipment. With the Eye Mouse, people with disabilities can control the cursor on the screen and use computers as nondisabled people do.

The "eye mouse" is an ocular prosthetic that allows the cursor to be positioned by looking and hands-free pointing. Two methods have been developed for Eye Mouse:

1. Video-based:

With a binocular eye-tracker, the PC can tell precisely where the eyes are staring on the screen. The binocular eye-tracker has been configured to send x,y co-ordinates of the eye position to the PC, locating the point on the screen which the person is looking at. Software on the PC takes this information and sends it to Windows as a mouse signal, and the x,y co-ordinates determine the screen cursor position. The selection (the emulation of pressing the button on a mouse) is achieved by the software detecting an unnatural event. This unnatural event refers to the time when the person winks (it’s different from natural eye blink and the eye tracker won’t treat blinking as a valid signal) or when the eye is held still for half a second. The use of a binocular system allows the closure of the right and left eyes to emulate pushing the right and left mouse buttons respectively.

2. Electrode interface:

The eyes act like a dipole in space and create an electrochemical field in the surrounding extra cellular fluid (see the figure below). With a look upward, the region above the eyes becomes more positively charged than the region below the eyes. The opposite is true if the person looks down. If the person looks right, the region to the right of the eyes becomes more positive, and vice versa if the person looks left. These differences around the eyes can be transduced by scalp electrodes and detected by an instrumentation amplifier.

Figure: The Eye Mouse amplifies voltages from eye movements using live surface electrodes and two different amplifiers. The electrodes are strategically placed so that vertical and horizontal eye movements produce the largest voltages.

The idea of using pupil movements to control a computer began as early as the 1970s. Some academic institutes and computer system corporations are still in the process of launching the research and design of the Eye Mouse looking for better systems. In 1996, Boston College presented their Eye Mouse development of the EagleEye system based on electrode interface. In April 1993, the video-based system developed in Loughborough University in Britain, was shown on the BBC. These two versions of the Eye Mouse have been broadly adapted and developed in many computer system corporations. The two versions of the Eye Mouse require different hardware and software. Generally speaking, the video-based version is more expensive than the electrode-interface version.

Besides helping people with disabilities control the computers, there are appealing uses for the Eye Mouse for people without disabilities. The novel use of the eye, in connection with the Eye Mouse, is the interaction between man and machine. It enables the user to utilize both the keyboard and the mouse simultaneously which allows for greater efficiency and enhances interactions with the computer. In addition, the Eye Mouse can also be used in the development and design of graphic user interfaces, as an aid for the handicapped, or in the analysis of human eye-response to still and motion images, such as printed advertisements and television commercials.

The Eye Mouse can be widely used in advertising. With critical eye-gaze information, advertisers can investigate which ads will attract more of their intended customers and also on what information from the ad most people are making their buy/no-buy decisions. Clients may find that the current format of an advertisement places a critical piece of information in a place that is overlooked, sacrificing potential sales. It enables the clients to create better ads for their intended audience.

The Eye Mouse also helps software developers create better use of interfaces and easier-to-use applications, because it will allow them to incorporate information about how the user interacts visually with their product. Application analysis is good for determining what makes a good graphical user interface (GUI). Knowing where a person looks during various use phases of an application allows software developers to design better GUI’s to accommodate different work modes. A possibility for future GUI designs is an intelligent GUI which detects what type of work mode the user is in and automatically changes its layout to optimize itself for that type of work.

In addition, it provides a revolutionary technology to the PC gaming industry. For the first time, games will be able to utilize two interfaces simultaneously in both the hands and in the eyes.

Furthermore, the Eye Mouse can be applied to Virtual Reality. It could also be a tool for tracking the position of a real world object, such as a head or a hand.

Now, in 1998, there are a lot of Eye Mouse products in the market. Every system and product developed is seeking to replace the traditionally hand-controlled mouse. However, no matter what innovation of software or hardware is developing, it must follow the standards of the hand-controlled mouse. The standards of the hand-controlled mouse are Microsoft standards with two buttons and the IBM standard with three buttons.

For thousands of people, an extreme disability such as severe cerebral palsy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis deprives them of the use of their limbs and facial muscles. Approximately 30,000 people are currently afflicted with ALS. Another 5,000 cases are reported each year in the U.S. To those who are incapable of controlling a hand-controlled mouse, the benefits of the Eye Mouse are extremely important. The future development of the Eye Mouse will not only endeavor to help the handicapped but also expand to become the most powerful tool for advertising and GUI. The flexibility of the Eye Mouse has been customized to fit the needs of prominent companies. It also has touched areas of research, providing researchers with physical evidence to associate pupil dilation with emotion. To sum up, the future of Eye Mouse is limitless.

‘Eye control of computers for the physically-challenged.’ Loughborough University: [http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/hu/groups/viserg/eyecon1.htm] 8 April 1998.

Gips, J. ‘Using EagleEyes – an electrodes based device for controlling the computer with your eyes – to help people with disabilities.’ [http://www.cs.bc.edu/~gips/EagleEyes/EEReport.html] 8 April 1998.

[http://www.adaptive-computer.com] 11 April 1998.

[http://www.erica.com] 11 April 1998.

[http://www.wearcam.org/eyemouse.html] 8 April 1998.

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