Eye Control - Controlling the environment around you with your eyes

We now control devices in our environment with the press of a button or the tap of an icon. But for those with mobility impairments, what is to us a habit becomes a serious challenge.

Humans habitually communicate thoughts and intents with their eyes. Now, technology can literally use eye movements for human-tomachine communication. Visionbased eye gaze trackers permit the tracking of the movement of the individual’s eyes along a screen with high accuracy. Virtual keyboards to type with one’s eye movement, to send emails or chat on social media are now possible. This technology, however, has its limitations, such as susceptibility to lighting conditions and user’s movements.

The alternative to using vision for eye-gaze tracking is based on the electro-oculogram, whereby the movement of the eye is associated with an electric potential. Up till recently, the standard way of acquiring the electro-oculogram required the attachment of gelbased electrodes around the eyes, normally in a laboratory setting.

But now, Jins Co. Ltd from Japan has come up with the Jins Meme: what looks like a regular pair of glasses with a sleek design, but with electrodes neatly embedded in the nose bridge and nose pads: a truly wearable and wireless technology. The question is, given the non-con- ventional electrode set-up; can it still offer robust signals that can be used for human computer interaction?

A team from the Department of Systems and Control Engineering at the University of Malta, led by Professor Kenneth Camilleri, with expertise in biomedical signal processing, has tested out this product and used the captured signals to type using a virtual keyboard. They are now developing more advanced algorithms to exploit the electrooculogram signals to achieve continuous eye gaze tracking. Imagine controlling a mouse cursor simply by eye movements, unobtrusively acquired through a pair of cool looking glasses that one wears.

This technology can help individuals suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to communicate with the world around them and to provide persons who lost their fine motor skills with an alternative robust means of communication. But: why stop with keyboards on a screen? This technology can be used to control the television set or air-conditioner, to give a third hand to the gamer controlling an avatar in virtual environments. The research underway at the University of Malta is steadily taking it there. Technology should eventually provide us all with the comfort and ease that we have come to expect from instant and remote control.