EyePoint Software Enhances Vision-based Input

EyePoint Software Enhances Vision-based Input


Now you can point and click without clicking.

EyePoint is a software and hardware suite that tracks your eye movements and translates them into directions. The system consists of a new software application and an adapted computer screen set up with a high-definition camera and infrared lights, both of which focus intently on the user’s eye movements. Clicking a key on the computer keyboard is also involved, but that’s the sole input other than signals from the eyes.

Look at a Web link, hold down the hot key, let go, and you’re there. You haven’t used the mouse, yet you’ve navigated through a link on a Web page.

About 90 percent of the people involved in the initial tests of the EyePoint mechanism reported preferring using it to using a mouse. The Stanford researcher behind the project also found that his test subjects performed basic tasks faster than they did using a mouse.

It’s not exactly disabled user-friendly, since it involves using at least one arm to click a key on the keyboard, but it’s a nod to disabled users in that it involves the eyes primarily. Adaptations can presumably be made to incorporate eyes-only computer commands.