Study on New Man-Machine Interface-Eye Mouse-Using Automatic Eye-Tracking Technique

本研究的目的是探讨一种新的人机界面的发展，我们称之为眼鼠标，它使用一个自动的眼睛跟踪的计算机用户。由眼动仪输出的数字信号，包括眼动的水平和垂直方向的运动和距离，被传送到计算机。然后，信号被处理，以便将眼睛的运动模拟为计算机显示器上光标的运动。我们花了很长时间来开发一个处理信号的软件，因为我们几乎没有参考资料。我们成功地实现了控制光标在显示器上的运动与用户的眼球运动同步，并通过实验认识到了标定的重要性和受试者头部移动的影响。在实验开始时，必须进行校准，以控制来自眼睛跟踪系统的信号的增益，以便将眼睛运动的程度拟合到监视器上的光标运动的区域中。由于受试者的头部移动产生光标位置的移动，光标可以移动的区域将偏离监视器上的标准位置。因此，整个系统受到主体头部移动的强烈影响。通过使用固定受试者的下巴的装置，头部移动的问题在一定程度上得到缓解。然而，它表明，我们已经找到了另一种解决方案来克服上述问题。

The purpose of this research is to investigate the development of a new man-machine interface, which we call an eye mouse, that uses an automatic eye-tracking of the user of a computer.Firstly we have developed an interface system which connects the eye-tracking system with the computer. The digital signal from the eye-tracking system that is composed of the motion and the distance of eye movements toward the horizontal and vertical directions is transferred to the computer. Then, the signal is processed in order to superimpose the movements of the eye as the movements of the cursor on the computer display. It took long time to develop a software that handle the signal because we have scarcely no references. We have successfully achieved to control the movements of the cursor on monitor that is synchronized with the movements of the eye of the user.We have recognized the impirtance of the calibration and the effect of shifting the head of the subject through the experiments. At the beginning of the experiment, the calibration has to be made that controls the gain of the signal from the eye-tracking system in order to fit the extent of the eye-movements into the area of the cursor-movements on the monitor. Since the head-shift of the subject produces the shift of the position of the cursor, the area the cursor can move will deviate from the standard position on the monitor. As a result, the whole system is strongly affected by the head-shift of the subject. The problem of head-shift is relieved to a certain extent by using the apparatus that fixes the chin of the subject. However, it was shown that we have found another solution to overcome the above problem.