A world of information can be gleaned from a glance. What we look at and how long we choose to look can give meaning and context to all forms of communication. Researchers at Stanford University are using the information locked in a stare to augment and improve the way that people interact with computers.

Eye Point

Modern eye tracking technologies are primarily used to help people who could not otherwise use traditional input devices due to disability as well as in industry to aid in designing more functional technologies. Manu Kumar, a former doctoral student at Stanford (currently an Angel Investor) recognized that with a little work he could modify this eye tracking technology to help able-bodied individuals.

At the core of his research is a software program called EyePoint. It acts as the intermediary between your eyes and a computer. If, for instance, you wanted to click on a link using EyePoint, you would hold down a hot key on your keyboard, look at the link you wanted to click on and then release the key. By combining a keyboard action with gaze-based pointing it makes the interaction much more natural for the user and reduces the number of false positives.

The eye tracking itself is done by using a high-resolution camera and a series of infrared LEDs to capture eye movement. Since eyes aren’t particularly stable, software post-processing is needed to smooth out the jitters.

The application that were tested through the course of Manu’s coursework were pointing and selection, scrolling, task switching and security.

What would be more interesting than gaze being used as an input device would be to use similar information to provide additional context to more traditional applications. Imagine if your computer could know what information you were focusing on and magnify that for easier reading; how about search results that were augmented to take into account the sites that held your attention the longest.

Looking at another angle, eye-tracking studies are already used by advertisers to help them decide how they want to arrange television commercials and print media, imagine if advertisers could extend this to beat banner blindness by dynamically altering placement based on an individuals attention.

While commercial applications of this technology are still over the horizon, this is just another stepping stone in giving computers the ability to understand our intentions more precisely than ever before.

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