Eye Tracking in New Interfaces
The word “interface” is a loaded one. It’s such a malleable word, and with regular, cutting edge progression in the tech worlds, we see it’s many uses popping up more and more. Interfaces are an essential ingredient in any human interaction, be it digital or physical. In a recent post we found, the author focuses on new user interfaces making headway in to our daily human activities. Perhaps they seem novel now, but soon enough we won’t give it a second thought as we scan our hand or face for identification, receive a readout of our current emotional state, or control an object using our thoughts alone.
Eye tracking and head tracking were a couple of the futuristic interfaces covered in the article on SixRevisions.com, which highlighted the PlayStation racing game Gran Turismo as being one of the first games released with head tracking technology. In the game, the PlayStation Eye camera will track a player’s head and control the view from within the cockpit of the car, providing a more realistic driving experience overall. Drive simulators in labs across the country have been using this technology for some time now, and it’s exciting to see it translated to a more topical, fast paced environment. As with actual driving, gamers will be able to glance to one side or the other quickly without losing sight of what’s in front of them.
As we’ve covered before, some home tinkerers are experimenting with head tracking and three-dimensional control. Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. candidate at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, is a prime example. Using a face detection algorithm from an open source computer-vision library, Harrison has created a simple 3D head-tracking device which allows for 3D-style viewing of a laptop, showing a display as if you were looking out the window and allowing you to move your head around for various angles and a better vantage point of the view.
The original article goes on to highlight brain-computer interfaces, citing an article for Time Magazine a few years ago that had the US Army actively pursuing “thought helmets” for potentially secure mind-to-mind communication between soldiers. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of development of new interfaces for the military, and physiological status monitoring is growing more common as well. The Military Operational Medicine Research Program is apparently developing sensors that can be embedded into clothing to monitor soldier’s physiological well being, checking their real-time health while on the move.
Some other interesting subjects covered include new digital displays to replace paper and ink, as well as robotics and augmented reality, another topic we cover here on the blog. Take a look; some of it may be eye opening.
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