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Projektpraktikum "Eye-Tracking"

Winter Term 2015 / 2016

Does the novel interaction technologies fascinates you? Do you aspire to work on the user-centered applications with natural interfaces? This winter term, the Institute for Web Science and Technologies (WeST) offers a unique opportunity for students to get involved in the future technologies with natural interfaces that can benefit the society. The objective is to move beyond the traditional input devices such as keyboard-mouse, and develop application interfaces to be controlled via user’s eye and mind. The bigger goal is to assist disabled people in interacting with computer applications, which is in the scope of European research project MAMEM.

In this Praktikum, you are expected to transform a web-based application interface (web search/maps/social networks/games) to interactive settings so the end users could control the necessary operations via eye movements. The project idea builds upon the series of eye tracking praktikum offered by WeST in last years. In the previous years, students have contributed towards a highly successful eye tracking game 'Schau Genau' that is effectively running at Landau garden fair 2015. Thousands of visitors have already played the interactive game and have shown remarkable interest in our gaze-based interaction.

In this Praktikum you would extend similar input operations (scroll, select, drag, click, type, zoom etc.) with gaze-based interaction to control the interface parameters. Moreover you would analyze how BCI (brain computer interface) could compliment the gaze-based interaction. You would explore cognitive state using reactive and passive BCI, which could provide different mind states of cognitive load, switching attention, event noticed, surprised, committed error during the eye-based interaction with the scenario application. These signals might potentially help minimizing error in gaze based commands and improve the performance. For the purpose, we would provide you state of the art interactive devices e.g. eyetracker and brain computer interface with SDK. The project would cover the software engineering aspects as well as provide enough research scope for innovative ideas.

Introduction Presentation

We will have a first informative meeting about the Praktikum on

Thursday, 23 July 2015 at 16.00 in room C 206

Students interested in joining the project are invited to come to the introduction presentation, where we would discuss different use case scenarios:

Web Search: Search is among the most important activities of Web users. Most of the search interfaces are very similar where users typically type a few words into a query box and receive a rank-ordered list of search results to navigate. How the search interface and user operations need to be customized for eye tracker in real time Web settings? How human mind reacts during various states of search (relevant/irrelevant results)? How the brain signals could be incorporated to improvise the eye tracking control?

Similarly we would discuss other scenarios (maps, Wikipedia, social networks etc.). Moreover, before the kickoff meeting at the start of winter semester we would already have the feedback from people with disabilities (results of the questionnaire to assess the computer use habits, difficulties and needs), which would help us to further narrow down the application purpose.

Here are the slides from introduction meeting.

Questions and registration

Please contact Chandan Kumar [ kumar@uni-koblenz.de ].

Interesting links

Eye Tracking

SMI http://www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/products/red250mobile.html

Tobii http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/eyex/

Brain Computer Interfaces

EB neuro High end BCI http://www.ebneuro.biz/en/neurology/ebneuro/galileo-suite/be-plus-ltm

Emotive BCI https://emotiv.com/product-specs/Emotiv%20EPOC%20Specifications%202014.pdf Youtube

Research articles

Eye tracking + Image http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.294.4905&rep=rep1&type=pdf