BLUE EYE TECHNOLOGY

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Imagine yourself in a world where humans interact with computers. You are
sitting in front of your personal computer that can listen, talk, or even scream aloud. It
has the ability to gather information about you and interact with you through special
techniques like facial recognition, speech recognition, etc. It can even understand your
emotions at the touch of the mouse. It verifies your identity, feels your presents, and
starts interacting with you .You asks the computer to dial to your friend at his office.
It realizes the urgency of the situation through the mouse, dials your friend at his
office, and establishes a connection.

Human cognition depends primarily on the ability to perceive, interpret, and

integrate audio-visuals and sensoring information. Adding extraordinary perceptual
abilities to computers would enable computers to work together with human beings as
intimate partners. Researchers are attempting to add more capabilities to computers
that will allow them to interact like humans, recognize human presents, talk, listen, or
even guess their feelings.

The BLUE EYES technology aims at creating computational machines that

have perceptual and sensory ability like those of human beings. It uses non-obtrusive
sensing method, employing most modern video cameras and microphones to identify
the user’s actions through the use of imparted sensory abilities. The machine can
understand what a user wants, where he is looking at, and even realize his physical or
emotional states.

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CHAPTER 2
SYSTEM OVERVIEW

Blue eyes system monitors the status of the operator’s visual attention through
measurement of saccadic activity. The system checks parameters like heart beat rate
and blood oxygenation against abnormal and triggers user defined alarms.
BlueEyes system consists of a mobile measuring device and a central
analytical system. The mobile device is integrated with Bluetooth module providing
wireless interface between sensors worn by the operator and the central unit. ID cards
assigned to each of the operators and adequate user profiles on the central unit side
provide necessary data personalization so the system consists of
 Mobile measuring device(DAU)
 Central System Unit(CSU)

Fig.2.1 System Overview

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The overall System diagram is as follows:-

Fig.2.2 System Diagram

2.1THE HARDWARE

2.1.1 Data Acquisition Unit

Data Acquisition Unit is a mobile part of the Blue eyes system. Its main
task is to fetch the physiological data from the sensor and to send it to the central
system to be processed. To accomplish the task the device must manage wireless
Bluetooth connections (connection establishment, authentication and
termination). Personal ID cards and PIN codes provide operator's authorization.
Communication with the operator is carried on using a simple 5-key keyboard, a
small LCD display and a beeper. When an exceptional situation is detected the
device uses them to notify the operator. Voice data is transferred using a small
headset, interfaced to the DAU with standard mini-jack plugs.
The Data Acquisition Unit comprises several hardware
modules Atmel 89C52 microcontroller -
system core Bluetooth module (based on
ROK101008) HD44780 - small LCD
display
24C16 - I2C EEPROM (on a removable ID card)

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MC145483 – 13bit
PCM codec Jazz
Multisensor interface
Beeper and LED indicators, 6 AA batteries and voltage level
monitor

Fig.2.3 DAU Components

2.1.2 Central System Unit

Central System Unit hardware is the second peer of the
wireless connection. The box contains a Bluetooth module (based on
ROK101008) and a PCM codec for voice data transmission. The module
is interfaced to a PC using a parallel, serial and USB cable. The audio data
is accessible through standard mini-jack sockets. To program operator's
personal ID cards we developed a simple programming device.

Fig.2.4 CSU Components

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The programmer is interfaced to a PC using serial and PS/2 (power
source) ports. Inside, there is Atmel 89C2051 microcontroller, which handles
UART transmission and I2C EEPROM (ID card) programming.

2.2 THE SOFTWARE:

Blue Eyes software’s main task is to look after working operators'

physiological condition. To assure instant reaction on the operators' condition
change the software performs real time buffering of the incoming data, real-
time physiological data analysis and alarm triggering.
The Blue Eyes software comprises several functional modules System
core facilitates the transfers flow between other system modules (e.g. transfers
raw data from the Connection Manager to data analyzers, processed data from
the data analyzers to GUI controls, other data analyzers, data logger etc.). The
System Core fundamental are single-producer-multi-consumer thread safe
queues. Any number of consumers can register to receive the data supplied by a
producer. Every single consumer can register at any number of producers,
receiving therefore different types of data. Naturally, every consumer may be a
producer for other consumers. This approach enables high system scalability –
new data processing modules (i.e. filters, data analyzers and loggers) can be
easily added by simply registering as a costumer.

Connection Manager is responsible for managing the wireless communication

between the mobile Data Acquisition Units and the central system. The
Connection Manager handles:
 communication with the CSU hardware
 searching for new devices in the covered range
 establishing Bluetooth connections
 connection authentication
 incoming data buffering
 sending alerts
Data Analysis module performs the analysis of the raw sensor data in order to

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obtain information about the operator’s physiological condition. The separately
running Data Analysis module supervises each of the working operators.

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The module consists of a number of smaller analyzers extracting different

types of information. Each of the analyzers registers at the appropriate Operator
Manager or another analyzer as a data consumer and, acting as a producer,
provides the results of the analysis. The most important analyzers are:
 Saccade detector - monitors eye movements in order to determine the
level of operator's visual attention
 Pulse rate analyzer - uses blood oxygenation signal to compute
operator's pulse rate
 Custom analyzers - recognize other behaviors than those which are built-
in the system. The new modules are created using C4.5 decision tree
induction algorithm
Visualization module provides a user interface for the supervisors. It enables
them to watch each of the working operator’s physiological condition along with
a preview of selected video source and related sound stream. All the incoming
alarm messages are instantly signaled to the supervisor. The Visualization
module can be set in an off- line mode, where all the data is fetched from the
database. Watching all the recorded physiological parameters, alarms, video and
audio data the supervisor is able to reconstruct the course of the selected
operator’s duty. The physiological data is presented using a set of custom-built
GUI controls:

 apie-chart used to present a percentage of time the operator was actively

acquiring the visual information
 A VU-meter showing the present value of a parameter time series
displaying a history of selected parameters' value.

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Fig.2.5 Software Analysis Diagram

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CHAPTER 3
EMOTION COMPUTING
Rosalind Picard (1997) describes why emotions are important to the
computing community. There are two aspects of affective computing: giving the
computer the ability to detect emotions and giving the computer the ability to
express emotions. Not only are emotions crucial for rational decision making as
Picard describes, but emotion detection is an important step to an adaptive
computer system. An adaptive, smart computer system has been driving our
efforts to detect a person’s emotional state. An important element of
incorporating emotion into computing is for productivity for a computer user. A
study (Dryer & Horowitz, 1997) has shown that people with personalities that are
similar or complement each other collaborate well. Dryer (1999) has also shown
that people view their computer as having a personality. For these reasons, it is
important to develop computers which can work well with its user.

3.1 THEORY
Based on Paul Ekman’s facial expression work, we see a correlation
between a person’s emotional state and a person’s physiological measurements.
Selected works from Ekman and others on measuring facial behaviors describe
Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System (Ekman and Rosenberg, 1997). One of
his experiments involved participants attached to devices to record certain
measurements including pulse, galvanic skin response (GSR), temperature,
somatic movement and blood pressure. He then recorded the measurements as
the participants were instructed to mimic facial expressions which corresponded
to the six basic emotions. He defined the six basic emotions as anger, fear,
sadness, disgust, joy and surprise. From this work, Dryer (1993) determined how
physiological measures could be used to distinguish various emotional states.
The measures taken were GSR, heart rate, skin temperature and general somatic
activity (GSA). These data were then subject to two analyses. For the first
analysis, a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure was used to determine the
dimensionality of the data.

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3.2 RESULT
The data for each subject consisted of scores for four physiological
assessments [GSA, GSR, pulse, and skin temperature, for each of the six
emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise)] across the
five minute baseline and test sessions. GSA data was sampled 80 times per
second, GSR and temperature were reported approximately 3-4 times per second
and pulse was recorded as a beat was detected, approximately 1 time per second.
To account for individual variance in physiology, we calculated the difference
between the baseline and test scores. Scores that differed by more than one and a
half standard deviations from the mean were treated as missing. By this criterion,
twelve score were removed from the analysis. The results show the theory behind
the Emotion mouse work is fundamentally sound. The physiological
measurements were correlated to emotions using a correlation model. The
correlation model is derived from a calibration process in which a baseline
attribute-to emotion correlation is rendered based on statistical analysis of
calibration signals generated by users having emotions that are measured or
otherwise known at calibration time.

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CHAPTER 4

TYPES OF EMOTION SENSORS

For Hands:
 Emotion Mouse
 Sentic Mouse

For Eyes:
 Expression Glasses
 Magic Pointing
 Eye Tracking

For Voice:
 Artificial Intelligence Speech Recognition

4.1 HAND
4.1.1 Emotion Mouse

Fig.4.1 Emotional Mouse

One proposed, non—invasive method for gaining user information
through touch is via a computer input device, the mouse. This then allows the
user to relate the cardiac rhythm, the body temperature, electrical conductivity of
the skin and other physiological

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attributes with the mood. This has led to the creation of the “Emotion Mouse”.
The device can measure heart rate, temperature, galvanic skin response and
minute bodily movements and matches them with six emotional states:
happiness, surprise, anger, fear, sadness and disgust. The mouse includes a set of
sensors, including infrared detectors and temperature-sensitive chips. These
components, User researchers’ stress, will also be crafted into other commonly
used items such as the office chair, the steering wheel, the keyboard and the
phone handle. Integrating the system into the steering wheel, for instance, could
allow an alert to be sounded when a driver becomes drowsy.
 Information Obtained From Emotion Mouse
1) Behavior
a. Mouse movements
b. Button click frequency
c. Finger pressure when a user presses his/her button

2) Physiological information
a. Heart
rate(Electrocardiogram(ECG
/EKG),
Photoplethysmogram(PPG))
b. Skin temperature(Thermester)
c. Skin electricity (Galvanic skin response,GSR)
d. Electromyographic activity (Electromyogram,MG)

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 Prototype

Fig.4.2 System Configuration for Emotional Mouse

 Samples Obtained From Emotional Mouse

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Fig.4.3 Different Signals

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4.1.2 Sentic Mouse

It is a modified computer mouse that includes a directional pressure
sensor for aiding in recognition of emotional valence (liking/attraction vs.

disliking/avoidance).

Fig.4.4 Sentic Mouse

4.2 EYE
4.2.1 Expression Glasses
A wearable device which allows any viewer to visualize the confusion
and interest levels of the wearer. Other recent developments in related
technology are the attempt to learn the needs of the user just by following the
interaction between the user and the computer in order to know what he/she is
interested in at any given moment. For example, by remembering the type of
websites that the user links to according to the mood and time of the day, the
computer could search on related sites and suggest the results the user.

Fig.4.5 Expression Glass

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CHAPTER 5
MANUAL AND GAZE INPUT CASCADED (MAGIC)
POINTING

This work explores a new direction in utilizing eye gaze for computer
input. Gaze tracking has long been considered as an alternative or potentially
superior pointing method for computer input. We believe that many fundamental
limitations exist with traditional gaze pointing. In particular, it is unnatural to
overload a perceptual channel such as vision with a motor control task. We
therefore propose an alternative approach, dubbed MAGIC (Manual and Gaze
Input Cascaded) pointing. With such an approach, pointing appears to the user to
be a manual task, used for fine manipulation and selection. However, a large
portion of the cursor movement is eliminated by warping the cursor to the eye
gaze area, which encompasses the target. Two specific MAGIC pointing
techniques, one conservative and one liberal, were designed, analyzed, and
implemented with an eye tracker we developed. They were then tested in a pilot
study.

In our view, there are two fundamental shortcomings to the existing gaze
pointing techniques, regardless of the maturity of eye tracking technology. First,
given the one-degree size of the fovea and the subconscious jittery motions that
the eyes constantly produce, eye gaze is not precise enough to operate UI widgets
such as scrollbars, hyperlinks, and slider handles In Proc. CHI’99: ACM
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 246-253, Pittsburgh, 15-
20 May1999 Copyright ACM 1999 0-201-48559-1/99/05...$5.00 on today’s GUI
interfaces. At a 25-inch viewing distance to the screen, one degree of arc
corresponds to 0.44 in, which is twice the size of a typical scroll bar and much
greater than the size of a typical character.

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Second, and perhaps more importantly, the eye, as one of our primary
perceptual devices, has not evolved to be a control organ. Sometimes its
movements are voluntarily controlled while at other times it is driven by external
events. With the target selection by dwell time method, considered more natural
than selection by blinking [7], one has to be conscious of where one looks and
how long one looks at an object. Other times it can be annoying and counter-
productive (such as unintended jumps to a web page). Furthermore, dwell time
can only substitute for one mouse click. There are often two steps to target
activation. A single click selects the target (e.g., an application icon) and a
double click (or a different physical button click) opens the icon (e.g., launches
an application).
Are there interaction techniques that utilize eye movement to assist the
control task but do not force the user to be overly conscious of his eye
movement? We wanted to design a technique in which pointing and selection
remained primarily a manual control task but were also aided by gaze tracking.
Our key idea is to use gaze to dynamically redefine (warp) the “home” position
of the pointing cursor to be at the vicinity of the target, which was presumably
what the user was looking at, thereby effectively reducing the cursor movement
amplitude needed for target selection.

Once the cursor position had been redefined, the user would need to only
make a small movement to, and click on, the target with a regular manual input
device. In other words, we wanted to achieve Manual And Gaze Input Cascaded
(MAGIC) pointing, or Manual Acquisition with Gaze Initiated Cursor. There are
many different ways of designing a MAGIC pointing technique. Critical to its
effectiveness is the identification of the target the user intends to acquire. We
have designed two MAGIC pointing techniques, one liberal and the other
conservative in terms of target identification and cursor placement. The liberal
approach is to warp the cursor to every new object the user looks at (See Figure
5.1).

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Fig.5.1
The user can then take control of the cursor by hand near (or on) the
target, or ignore it and search for the next target. Operationally, a new object is
defined by sufficient distance (e.g., 120 pixels) from the current cursor position,
unless the cursor is in a controlled motion by hand. Since there is a 120-pixel
threshold, the cursor will not be warped when the user does continuous
manipulation such as drawing. Note that this MAGIC pointing technique is
different from traditional eye gaze control, where the user uses his eye to point at
targets either without a cursor or with a cursor that constantly follows the jittery
eye gaze motion.

The liberal approach may appear “pro-active,” since the cursor waits readily in
the vicinity of or on every potential target. The user may move the cursor once he
decides to acquire the target he is looking at. On the other hand, the user may also feel
that the cursor is over-active when he is merely looking at a target, although he may
gradually adapt to ignore this behavior. The more conservative MAGIC pointing
technique we have explored does not warp a cursor to a target until the manual input
device has been actuated. Once the manual input device has been actuated, the cursor
is warped to the gaze area reported by the eye tracker.

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This area should be on or in the vicinity of the target. The user would
then steer the cursor annually towards the target to complete the target
acquisition. As illustrated in Figure 5.2, to minimize directional uncertainty after
the cursor appears in the conservative technique, we introduced an “intelligent”
bias. Instead of being placed at the center of the gaze area, the cursor position is
offset to the intersection of the manual actuation vector and the boundary f the
gaze area. This means that once warped, the cursor is likely to appear in motion
towards the target, regardless of how the user actually actuated the manual input
device. We hoped that with the intelligent bias the user would not have to Gaze
position reported by eye tracker Eye tracking boundary with 95% confidence
True target will be within the circle with 95% probability. The cursor is warped
to eye tracking position, which is on or near the true target Previous cursor
position, far from target (e.g., 200 pixels) Figure5.1.

Fig 5.2

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The liberal MAGIC pointing technique: cursor is placed in the vicinity of

a target that the user fixates on. Actuate input device, observe the cursor position
and decide in which direction to steer the cursor. The cost to this method is the
increased manual movement amplitude. Figure5.2.. The conservative MAGIC
pointing technique with “intelligent offset” To initiate a pointing trial, there are
two strategies available to the user. One is to follow “virtual inertia:” move from
the cursor’s current position towards the new target the user is looking at. This is
likely the strategy the user will employ, due to the way the user interacts with
today’s interface. The alternative strategy, which may be more advantageous but
takes time to learn, is to ignore the previous cursor position and make a motion
which is most convenient and least effortful to the user for a given input device.

The goal of the conservative MAGIC pointing method is the following.

Once the user looks at a target and moves the input device, the cursor will appear
“out of the blue” in motion towards the target, on the side of the target opposite
to the initial actuation vector. In comparison to the liberal approach, this
conservative approach has both pros and cons. While with this technique the
cursor would never be over-active and jump to a place the user does not intend to
acquire, it may require more hand-eye coordination effort. Both the liberal and
the conservative MAGIC pointing techniques offer the following potential
advantages:
1. Reduction of manual stress and fatigue, since the cross screen long-
distance cursor movement is eliminated from manual control.
2. Practical accuracy level. In comparison to traditional pure gaze
pointing whose accuracy is fundamentally limited by the nature of
eye movement, the MAGIC pointing techniques let the hand complete
the pointing task, so they can be as accurate as any other manual input
techniques.
3. A more natural mental model for the user. The user does not have to
be aware of the role of the eye gaze. To the user, pointing continues
to be a manual task, with a cursor conveniently appearing where it

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needs to be.

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4. Speed. Since the need for large magnitude pointing operations is less
than with pure manual cursor control, it is possible that MAGIC
pointing will be faster than pure manual pointing.
5. Improved subjective speed and ease-of-use. Since the manual
pointing amplitude is smaller, the user may perceive the MAGIC
pointing system to operate faster and more pleasantly than pure
manual control, even if it operates at the same speed or more slowly.

The fourth point wants further discussion. According to the

well accepted Fitts’ Law, manual pointing time is logarithmically
proportional to the A/W ratio, where A is the movement distance
and W is the target size. In other words, targets which are smaller
or farther away take longer to acquire.

For MAGIC pointing, since the target size remains the

same but the cursor movement distance is shortened, the pointing
time can hence be reduced. It is less clear if eye gaze control
follows Fitts’ Law. In Ware and Mikaelian’s study, selection time
was shown to be logarithmically proportional to target distance,
thereby conforming to Fitts’ Law. To the contrary, Silbert and
Jacob [9] found that trial completion time with eye tracking input
increases little with distance, therefore defying Fitts’ Law. In
addition to problems with today’s eye tracking systems, such as
delay, error, and inconvenience, there may also be many potential
human factor disadvantages to the MAGIC pointing techniques we
have proposed, including the following:

1. With the more liberal MAGIC pointing technique, the cursor warping can
be overactive at times, since the cursor moves to the new gaze location
whenever the eye gaze moves more than a set distance (e.g., 120 pixels)
away from the cursor. This could be particularly distracting when the user

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is trying to read. It is possible to introduce additional constraint according
to the context. For example, when the user’s eye appears to follow a text
reading pattern, MAGIC pointing can be automatically suppressed.

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2. With the more conservative MAGIC pointing technique, the uncertainty

of the exact location at which the cursor might appear may force the user,
especially a novice, to adopt a cumbersome strategy: take a touch (use the
manual input device to activate the cursor), wait (for the cursor to
appear), and move (the cursor to the target manually). Such a strategy
may prolong the target acquisition time. The user may have to learn a
novel hand-eye coordination pattern to be efficient with this technique.
Gaze position reported by eye tracker Eye tracking boundary with 95%
confidence True target will be within the circle with 95% probability The
cursor is warped to the boundary of the gaze area, along the initial
actuation vector Previous cursor position, far from target Initial manual
actuation vector

3. With pure manual pointing techniques, the user, knowing the current
cursor location, could conceivably perform his motor acts in parallel to
visual search. Motor action may start as soon as the user’s gaze settles on
a target. With MAGIC pointing techniques, the motor action computation
(decision) cannot start until the cursor appears. This may negate the time
saving gained from the MAGIC pointing technique’s reduction of
movement amplitude. Clearly, experimental (implementation and
empirical) work is needed to validate, refine, or invent alternative
MAGIC pointing techniques.

5.1 IMPLEMENTATION

We took two engineering efforts to implement the MAGIC pointing

techniques. One was to design and implement an eye tracking system and the
other was to implement MAGIC pointing techniques at the operating systems
level, so that the techniques can work with all software applications beyond
“demonstration” software.

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5.2 THE IBM ALMADEN EYETRACKER

Since the goal of this work is to explore MAGIC pointing as a user

interface technique, we started out by purchasing a commercial eye tracker (ASL
Model 5000) after a market survey. In comparison to the system reported in early
studies (e.g. [7]), this system is much more compact and reliable. However, we
felt that it was still not robust enough for a variety of people with different eye
characteristics, such as pupil brightness and correction glasses. We hence chose
to develop and use our own eye tracking system [10]. Available commercial
systems, such as those made by ISCAN Incorporated, LC Technologies, and
Applied Science Laboratories (ASL), rely on a single light source that is
positioned either off the camera axis in the case of the ISCANETL-400 systems,
or on-axis in the case of the LCT and the ASL E504 systems. Illumination from
an off-axis source (or ambient illumination) generates a dark pupil image.

When the light source is placed on-axis with the camera optical axis, the
camera is able to detect the light reflected from the interior of the eye, and the
image of the pupil appears bright (see Figure5.3).
This effect is often seen as the red-eye in flash photographs when the
flash is close to the camera lens.

Fig 5.3
Image of pupil

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Bright (left) and dark (right) pupil images resulting from on- and off-axis
illumination. The glints, or corneal reflections, from the on- and off-axis light
sources can be easily identified as the bright points in the iris. The Almaden
system uses two near infrared (IR) time multiplexed light sources, composed of
two sets of IR LED's, which were synchronized with the camera frame rate. One
light source is placed very close to the camera's optical axis and is synchronized
with the even frames. Odd frames are synchronized with the second light source,
positioned off axis. The two light sources are calibrated to provide approximately
equivalent whole-scene illumination.
Pupil detection is realized by means of subtracting the dark pupil image
from the bright pupil image. After thresholding the difference, the largest
connected component is identified as the pupil. This technique significantly
increases the robustness and reliability of the eye tracking system. After
implementing our system with satisfactory results, we discovered that similar
pupil detection schemes had been independently developed by Tomonoetal and
Ebisawa and Satoh.
Once the pupil has been detected, the corneal reflection (the glint
reflected from the surface of the cornea due to one of the light sources) is
determined from the dark pupil image. The reflection is then used to estimate the
user's point of gaze in terms of the screen coordinates where the user is looking
at. The estimation of the user's gaze requires an initial calibration procedure,
similar to that required by commercial eye trackers.
Our system operates at 30 frames per second on a Pentium II 333 MHz
machine running Windows NT. It can work with any PCI frame grabber
compatible with Video for Windows.

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5.3 IMPLEMENTING MAGIC POINTING

We programmed the two MAGIC pointing techniques on a Windows NT

system. The techniques work independently from the applications. The MAGIC
pointing program takes data from both the manual input device (of any type, such
as a mouse) and the eye tracking system running either on the same machine or
on another machine connected via serial port. Raw data from an eye tracker
cannot be directly used for gaze- based interaction, due to noise from image
processing, eye movement jitters, and samples taken during saccade (ballistic eye
movement) periods. We experimented with various filtering techniques and
found the most effective filter in our case is similar to that described in [7]. The
goal of filter design in general is to make the best compromise between
preserving signal bandwidth and eliminating unwanted noise. The key is to select
fixation points with minimal delay. Samples collected during a saccade are
unwanted and should be avoided. In designing our algorithm for picking points
of fixation, we considered our tracking system speed (30 Hz), and that the
MAGIC pointing techniques utilize gaze information only once for each new
target, probably immediately after a saccade. Our filtering algorithm was
designed to pick a fixation with minimum delay by means of selecting two
adjacent points over two samples.

5.4 EXPERIMENT

Empirical studies are relatively rare in eye tracking-based interaction

research, although they are particularly needed in this field. Human behavior and
processes at the perceptual motor level often do not conform to conscious-level
reasoning. One usually cannot correctly describe how to make a turn on a
bicycle. Hypotheses on novel interaction techniques can only be validated by
empirical data. However, it is also particularly difficult to conduct empirical
research on gaze-based interaction techniques, due to the complexity of eye
movement and the lack of reliability in eye tracking equipment. Satisfactory

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results only come when “everything is going right.” When results are not as
expected, it is difficult to find the true reason among many possible reasons: Is it
because a subject’s particular eye property fooled the eye tracker? Was there a
calibration error? Or random noise in the imaging system? Or is the hypothesis in
fact invalid? We are still at a very early stage of exploring the MAGIC pointing
techniques. More refined or even very different techniques may be designed in
the future. We are by no means ready to conduct the definitive empirical studies
on MAGIC pointing. However, we also feel that it is important to subject our
work to empirical evaluations early so that quantitative observations can be made
and fed back to the iterative design-evaluation-design cycle. We therefore
decided to conduct a small-scale pilot study to take an initial peek at the use of
MAGIC pointing, however unrefined.
5.5 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The two MAGIC pointing techniques described earlier were put to test using a
set of parameters such as the filter’s temporal and spatial thresholds, the
minimum cursor warping distance, and the amount of “intelligent bias”
(subjectively selected by the authors without extensive user testing). Ultimately
the MAGIC pointing techniques should be evaluated with an array of manual
input devices, against both pure manual and pure gaze-operated pointing
methods.

Since this is an early pilot study, we decided to limit ourselves to one

manual input device. A standard mouse was first considered to be the manual
input device in the experiment. However, it was soon realized not to be the most
suitable device for MAGIC pointing, especially when a user decides to use the
push-upwards strategy with the intelligent offset. Because in such a case the user
always moves in one direction, the mouse tends to be moved off the pad, forcing
the user adjust the mouse position, often during a pointing trial. We hence
decided to use a miniature isometric pointing stick (IBM Track Point IV,
commercially used in the IBM ThinkPad 600 and 770 series notebook
computers). Another device suitable for MAGIC pointing is a touchpad: the user
can choose one convenient gesture and to take advantage of the intelligent offset.
The experimental task was essentially a Fitts’ pointing task. Subjects were asked

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to point and click at targets appearing in random order. If the subject clicked off-
target, a miss was logged but the trial continued until a target was clicked. An
extra trial was added to make up for the missed trial. Only trials with no misses
were collected for time performance analyses. Subjects were asked to complete
the task as quickly as possible and as accurately as possible. To serve as a
motivator, a $20 cash prize was set for the subject with the shortest mean session

completion time with any technique.

Fig.5.4

The task was presented on a 20 inch CRT color monitor, with a 15 by 11

inch viewable area set at resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. Subjects sat from the
screen at a distance of 25 inches. The following factors were manipulated in the
experiments:
 two target sizes: 20 pixels (0.23 in or 0.53 degree of viewing angle at 25
in distance) and 60 pixels in diameter (0.7 in, 1.61degree)
 three target distances: 200 pixels (2.34 in, 5.37 degree), 500 pixels (5.85in,
13.37 degree), and 800 pixels (9.38 in, 21.24 degree)
 three pointing directions: horizontal, vertical and diagonal

A within-subject design was used. Each subject performed the task with all three
techniques: (1) Standard, pure manual pointing with no gaze tracking (No Gaze); (2)
The conservative MAGIC pointing method with intelligent offset (Gaze1); (3) The
liberal MAGIC pointing method (Gaze2). Nine subjects, seven male and two female,
completed the experiment.
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The order of techniques was balanced by a Latin square pattern. Seven

subjects were experienced Track Point users, while two had little or no
experience. With each technique, a 36-trial practice session was first given,
during which subjects were encouraged to explore and to find the most suitable
strategies (aggressive, gentle, etc.). The practice session was followed by two
data collection sessions. Although our eye tracking system allows head motion,
at least for those users who do not wear glasses, we decided to use a chin rest to
minimize instrumental error.

5.6 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Given the pilot nature and the small scale of the experiment, we expected
the statistical power of the results to be on the weaker side. In other words, while
the significant effects revealed are important, suggestive trends that are
statistically non- significant are still worth noting for future research. First, we
found that subjects’ trial completion time significantly varied with techniques:
F(2, 16) = 6.36, p < 0.01.

Fig 5.5

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The total average completion time was 1.4 seconds with the standard
manual control technique 1.52 seconds with the conservative MAGIC pointing
technique (Gaze1), and 1.33 seconds with the liberal MAGIC pointing technique
(Gaze2). Note that theGaze1
Technique had the greatest improvement from the first to the second
experiment session, suggesting the possibility of matching the performance of
the other two techniques with further practice.
As expected, target size significantly influenced pointing time: F(1,8) = 178, p
<0.01. This was true for both the manual and the two MAGIC pointing
technique(Figure5.6).

Fig 5.6
Pointing amplitude also significantly affected completion time: F(2, 8) = 97.5, p<
0.001. However, the amount of influence varied with the technique used, as indicated
by the significant interaction between technique and amplitude: F(4, 32) = 7.5, p <
0.001 (Figure5.7).

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Fig 5.7

As pointing amplitude increased from 200 pixels to 500 pixels and then to
800 pixels, subjects’ completion time with the No Gaze condition increased in a
non-linear, logarithmic-like pace as Fitts’ Law predicts. This is less true with the
two MAGIC pointing techniques, particularly the Gaze2 condition, which is
definitely not logarithmic. Nonetheless, completion time with the MAGIC
pointing techniques did increase as target distance increased. This is intriguing
because in MAGIC pointing techniques, the manual control portion of the
movement should be the distance from the warped cursor position to the true
target. Such distance depends on eye tracking system accuracy, which is
unrelated to the previous cursor position.
In short, while completion time and target distance with the MAGIC
pointing techniques did not completely follow Fitts’ Law, they were not
completely independent either. Indeed, when we lump target size and target
distance according to the Fitts’ Law Index of Difficulty ID = log2(A/W + 1)
[15], we see a similar phenomenon. For the No_Gaze condition:
T = 0.28 + 0.31 ID (r²=0.912)

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The particular settings of our experiment were very different from those
typically reported in a Fitts’ Law experiment: to simulate more realistic tasks we
used circular targets distributed in varied directions in a randomly shuffled order,
instead of two vertical bars displaced only in the horizontal dimension. We also
used an isometric pointing stick, not a mouse. Considering these factors, the
above equation is reasonable. The index of performance (IP) was 3.2 bits per
second, in comparison to the 4.5 bits per second in a typical setting (repeated
mouse clicks on two vertical bars) [16].

For Gaze 1 condition:

T=0.8+0.22 ID (r^2=0.716)

IP=4.55 bits per second

For Gaze 2 condition:

T=0.6+0.21 ID (r^2=0.804)

IP=4.76 bits per second

Note that the data from the two MAGIC pointing techniques fit the
Fitts’ Law model relatively poorly (as expected), although the indices of
performance (4.55 and 4.76 bps) were much higher than the manual condition
(3.2 bps).

Finally, Figure5.8 shows that the angle at which the targets were
presented had little influence on trial completion time: F(2, 16) = 1.57, N.S.

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Fig 5.8
The number of misses (clicked off target) was also analyzed. The only
significant factor to the number of misses is target size: F(1,8) = 15.6, p < 0.01.
Users tended to have more misses with small targets. More importantly, subjects
made no more misses with the MAGIC pointing techniques than with the pure
manual technique (No_Gaze – 8.2 %, Gaze1 –7%, Gaze2 –7.5%).

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CHAPTER 6

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT SPEECH RECOGNITION

It is important to consider the environment in which the speech

recognition system has to work. The grammar used by the speaker and accepted
by the system, noise level, noise type, position of the microphone, and speed and
manner of the user’s speech are some factors that may affect the quality of
speech recognition .When you dial the telephone number of a big company, you
are likely to hear the sonorous voice of a cultured lady who responds to your call
with great courtesy saying “Welcome to company X. Please give me the
extension number you want”. You pronounce the extension number, your name,
and the name of person you want to contact. If the called person accepts the call,
the connection is given quickly. This is artificial intelligence where an automatic
call-handling system is used without employing any telephone operator.

6.1 THE TECHNOLOGY

Artificial intelligence (AI) involves two basic ideas. First, it involves

studying the thought processes of human beings. Second, it deals with
representing those processes via machines (like computers, robots, etc). AI is
behavior of a machine, which, if performed by a human being, would be called
intelligent. It makes machines smarter and more useful, and is less expensive
than natural intelligence. Natural language processing (NLP) refers to artificial
intelligence methods of communicating with a computer in a natural language
like English. The main objective of a NLP program is to understand input and
initiate action. The input words are scanned and matched against internally stored
known words. Identification of a key word causes some action to be taken. In this
way, one can communicate with the computer in one’s language. No special
commands or computer language are required. There is no need to enter
programs in a special language for creating software.

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6.2 SPEECH RECOGNITION

The user speaks to the computer through a microphone, which, in used; a

simple system may contain a minimum of three filters. The more the number of
filters used, the higher the probability of accurate recognition. Presently,
switched capacitor digital filters are used because these can be custom-built in
integrated circuit form. These are smaller and cheaper than active filters using
operational amplifiers. The filter output is then fed to the ADC to translate the
analogue signal into digital word. The ADC samples the filter outputs many
times a second. Each sample represents different amplitude of the signal .Evenly
spaced vertical lines represent the amplitude of the audio filter output at the
instant of sampling. Each value is then converted to a binary number proportional
to the amplitude of the sample. A central processor unit (CPU) controls the input
circuits that are fed by the ADCS. A large RAM (random access memory) stores
all the digital values in a buffer area. This digital information, representing the
spoken word, is now accessed by the CPU to process it further. The normal
speech has a frequency range of 200 Hz to 7 kHz. Recognizing a telephone call is
more difficult as it has bandwidth limitation of 300 Hz to3.3kHz.
As explained earlier, the spoken words are processed by the filters and
ADCs. The binary representation of each of these words becomes a template or
standard, against which the future words are compared. These templates are
stored in the memory. Once the storing process is completed, the system can go
into its active mode and is capable of identifying spoken words. As each word is
spoken, it is converted into binary equivalent and stored in RAM. The computer
then starts searching and compares the binary input pattern with the templates. t
is to be noted that even if the same speaker talks the same text, there are always
slight variations in amplitude or loudness of the signal, pitch, frequency
difference, time gap, etc. Due to this reason, there is never a perfect match
between the template and binary input word. The pattern matching process
therefore uses statistical techniques and is designed to look for the best fit.

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The values of binary input words are subtracted from the corresponding
values in the templates. If both the values are same, the difference is zero and
there is perfect match. If not, the subtraction produces some difference or error.
The smaller the error, the better the match. When the best match occurs, the word
is identified and displayed on the screen or used in some other manner. The
search process takes a considerable amount of time, as the CPU has to make
many comparisons before recognition occurs. This necessitates use of very high-
speed processors. A large RAM is also required as even though a spoken word
may last only a few hundred milliseconds, but the same is translated into many
thousands of digital words. It is important to note that alignment of words and
templates are to be matched correctly in time, before computing the similarity
score. This process, termed as dynamic time warping, recognizes that different
speakers pronounce the same words at different speeds as well as elongate
different parts of the same word. This is important for the speaker-independent
recognizers.

6.3 APPLICATIONS
One of the main benefits of speech recognition system is that it lets user
do other works simultaneously. The user can concentrate on observation and
manual operations, and still control the machinery by voice input commands.
Another major application of speech processing is in military operations. Voice
control of weapons is an example. With reliable speech recognition equipment,
pilots can give commands and information to the computers by simply speaking
into their microphones—they don’t have to use their hands for this purpose.
Another good example is a radiologist scanning hundreds of X-rays, ultrasono
grams, CT scans and simultaneously dictating conclusions to a speech
recognition system connected to word processors. The radiologist can focus his
attention on the images rather than writing the text. Voice recognition could also
be used on computers for making airline and hotel reservations. A user requires
simply to state his needs, to make reservation, cancel a reservation, or make
enquiries about schedule.
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CHAPTER 7

THE SIMPLE USER INTEREST TRACKER(SUITOR)

Computers would have been much more powerful, had they gained
perceptual and sensory abilities of the living beings on the earth. What needs to
be developed is an intimate relationship between the computer and the humans.
And the Simple User Interest Tracker (SUITOR) is a revolutionary approach in
this direction.
By observing the Webpage a netizen is browsing, the SUITOR can help
by fetching more information at his desktop. By simply noticing where the user’s
eyes focus on the computer screen, the SUITOR can be more precise in
determining his topic of interest. It can even deliver relevant information to a
handheld device. The success lies in how much the suitor can be intimate to the
user. IBM's BlueEyes research project began with a simple question, according to
Myron Flickner, a manager in Almaden's USER group: Can we exploit nonverbal
cues to create more effective user interfaces?
One such cue is gaze—the direction in which a person is looking.
Flickner and his colleagues have created some new techniques for tracking a
person's eyes and have incorporated this gaze-tracking technology into two
prototypes. One, called SUITOR (Simple User Interest Tracker), fills a scrolling
ticker on a computer screen with information related to the user's current task.
SUITOR knows where you are looking, what applications you are running, and
what Web pages you may be browsing. "If I'm reading a Web page about IBM,
for instance," says Paul Maglio, the Almaden cognitive scientist who invented
SUITOR, "the system presents the latest stock price or business news stories that
could affect IBM. If I read the headline off the ticker, it pops up the story in a
browser window. If I start to read the story, it adds related stories to the ticker.
That's the whole idea of an attentive system—one that attends to what you are
doing, typing, reading, so that it can attend to your information needs."

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CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION

The nineties witnessed quantum leaps interface designing for improved

man machine interactions. The BLUE EYES technology ensures a convenient
way of simplifying the life by providing more delicate and user friendly facilities
in computing devices. Now that we have proven the method, the next step is to
improve the hardware. Instead of using cumbersome modules to gather
information about the user, it will be better to use smaller and less intrusive units.
The day is not far when this technology will push its way into your house hold,
making you more lazy. It may even reach your hand held mobile device. Any
way this is only a technological forecast.

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REFERENCES

1) www.wikipedia.com
2) www.techreview.com
3) www.almaden.ibm.com
4) www.research.ibm.com
5) www.metropolismag.com
6) www.visuallee.com
7) www.howstuffworks.com

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