ETH-Zürich: Glasses that track your every glance

Licensing Opportunity

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH-Zürich) have developed eye-movement detection technology with potential medical applications as well as applications in interactive gaming.

The device is a Wearable Eye-Tracker which uses dry electrodes attached to a glasses frame for EOG recording and integrates an analysis component which processes the signals in real-time and allows for data storage and wireless transmission over several hours.

A corresponding procedure for signal processing and eye movement analysis performs automatic compensation and adaptive processing of EOG signals in real-time by taking into account data from one or more additional sensors (e.g. light sensor, accelerometer, humidity sensor).

The invention therefore has potential for a wide range of different medical as well as interactive and traditional gaming applications.

Main Advantages

• Wearable and unobtrusive device
• Complete integration into goggles possible
• Use of dry electrodes
• Automatic analysis, data storage and wireless transmission
• Long-term, daily-life eye movement recordings
• Adaptive real-time signal processing and artefact compensation

Field of Application

• Medical: e.g. long-term examination of eye movements and their characteristics
• Research: e.g. psychological diagnosis or the analysis of human social interactions
• Home care: e.g. monitoring of disabled or elderly people and automatic notification in case of medical emergency
• Game industry: e.g. as a new input device for traditional and novel interactive computer / console games
• Novel human-computer - interfaces (HCI) for consumer electronics

Patent Status

• Patent pending EP

Background

For medical examinations such as the diagnosis of disorders in the oculomotor system or for the detection of REM phases in sleep polygraphy, so far, patients have to visit a specialized hospital or doctor. During such a consultation, eye movements are usually recorded using electrooculography (EOG) and analyzed by hand in a post processing step. It would be desirable to be able to perform an automatic recording and analysis of eye movements of a person over a longer period of time in daily life.

With interactive games having become very popular, the interest in novel input devices (such as the Wii from Nintendo) increases. Eye movements could be implemented as a new gesture-based input channel for these games. For this, they have to be recorded robustly and unobtrusively during physical activity.

To achieve the above, EOG electrodes can be attached to a glasses frame worn by the user which minimizes disturbances during physical activities. However, eye movement recordings have to be made resistant to the following external influences:

• Changes in ambient light
• Optokinetic effects of head-eye interaction and physical activity
• Changes in skin humidity caused by sweating
• Other similar signal artefacts

Ref. No. T-07-058