Cogain Camp Pragh 2008

The 4th international COGAIN conference on eye gaze interaction had communication, environmental control and mobility control as its main themes. These three aspects together constitute the means to give people with severe motor disabilities independence in their daily lives. Eye gaze is often the most effective means of interacting with devices associated with these. Much progress has been made in developing eyetracking systems with a high degree of usability, and in developing systems for text entry using gaze. There are now new approaches to text entry and communication which offer higher input rates than have been previously possible. It is also important to consider enabling communication with mobile devices as well as conventional screen based applications, and to consider also how low cost, less accurate gaze systems can best be utilised. There are also now research questions about how to best to extend the use of gaze and enable users to interact with the local environment to control mobility devices such as scooters and wheelchairs. A Danish person with motor neuron disease and an experienced user of gaze communication devices said recently "One of the future challenges should be to make a computer so that you can drive the wheelchair (safely!) using only an eye tracker". Gaze control has the potential to make really significant improvements to the quality of life of people with severe motor impairments. The COGAIN conferences are the major international events with focus particularly on gaze communication for people with disabilities.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• gaze_interaction
• gazetracking
• ITU
• COGAIN
• wheelchair
• EMG
• NIA