Three Ph.D. students from the IT University have created a cheap alternative to commercial gaze trackers. Their invention can lead to a major breakthrough for eye-controlled systems and eventually help the disabled in the third world.

Visit a website. Download a zip file. Install a webcam. Look at nine given points on the screen. Now you can control your computer with your eyes. This is indeed reality since three Ph.D. students have created an open source gaze tracker. Gaze trackers are usually expensive, but with this new invention, everybody can benefit from the technology. The software is free, and the only hardware needed is one cheap webcam.

“Our goal is to make gaze tracking mainstream, says Javier San Agustin, one of the creators of the ITU Gaze Tracker.”Gaze tracking has amazing potential, but with prizes around 15000 euros, the commercial machines are without the economic reach of ordinary people. Our goal has been to use cheap, accessible hardware to make gaze tracking accessible for everyone.”

Because the components of the gaze tracker are cheap, it has been a challenge to make the interface tolerant to visual “noise”. The ITU Gaze Tracker is not yet quite as precise as the commercial systems, but it fully lives up to the basic requirements for a gaze tracker. And as the cheap webcams become better, the precision will improve.

Traffic safety and schizophrenia
The perspectives in gaze tracking are amazing. The first attempts to measure the movements of the human eye took place in the 19th century. The patient’s eyes were sedated with cocaine, and a piece of metal was placed directly on the eyeball. Today, the technology is more advanced, and it can solve major problems in the modern world. Today, some high end trucks have built-in gaze trackers that monitor whether the driver is falling asleep. Doctors can use gaze trackers to diagnose schizophrenia, and patients with motor disabilities can use ”eye-typing” programs to communicate.

Community more important than money
It is free of charge to download the ITU Gaze Tracker, and the source code is open. Since the gaze tracker was made available online, it has been downloaded by more than 5000 users worldwide, and an enthusiastic community has emerged. The users share their experiences and try to improve the system. They also report to the gaze group when they find a bug in the program, and this allows the creators to constantly improve their product.

”When we first made the gaze tracker, it was tested on our three laptops, so obviously there is room for improvement. The feedback from the community is a really good way to solve these problems. This was just what we hoped to achieve, and that is more important than making money. It is rewarding in another way,” says Javier San Agustin.

However, the feedback not only deals with minor improvements of the code. Some of the users make detailed requests for further development of the software and others write to praise the invention and tell how they use it. At the University of Texas, for example, the ITU Gaze Tracker is used in the ”Human-Computer Interaction” classes.

Elsewhere in the world, users are developing new, advanced applications and programs for the gaze tracker. In Germany, programmers have developed a free image analysis program compatible with the ITU Gaze Tracker. These programs are used by advertising companies and are usually expensive. Even other users are trying to create eye controlled video games.

”These things make us very proud,” says Javier San Agustin. ”Our gaze tracker is very basic, but it is functional and easy to work with. That makes it easy to develop new applications for it. The ITU Gaze Tracker is de facto becoming the ’common standard’ on the market.”

Gaze tracking for the third world
Gaze trackers already play an important part in the lives of patients with motor disabilities. If one cannot communicate with the mouth or the hands, the eyes can be a fruitful alternative. Patients with the disease ALS gradually lose control of their bodies and can eventually only move their eyes. But by using a gaze tracker and a typing program, they can still communicate. In Denmark, the welfare state provides the patients with expensive eye trackers, but in the Third World, this is not the case. And this makes the ITU Gaze Ttracker very interesting.

”It would be fantastic if our product could be used in the Third World,” says Javier San Agustin. ”We plan to talk to some NGO’s about it. We hope we will succeed in spreading the technology, because everybody can benefit from gaze tracking.”