[plug] [Slightly-OT] Computer for Paralysed

[Denis Brown]

At 12:40 PM 15/09/2005, you wrote:
>On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 11:06 +0800, Jonathan Young wrote:
> > I guess some ideas to look at would be voice control, tablet PCs /
> > laptops, touch-screens (though he would need to use his mouth to hold

Many years ago there was a group of people operating out of a university in 
South Australia, a project called "cyclops" IIRC.   It was featured on the 
ABC inventor show (Towards 2000???) at the time.   My group at UWA got to 
see a demo of it but we did nothing further and the details are somewhat 
fuzzy in my mind.   I will describe it here in case others recall it better 
than I, and may have more recent information on it or something similar.

What they did was, using an infrared energy source, illuminate the 
subject's face and with two cameras focussed on the eyes, and some software 
smarts, worked out where the subject was fixating his/her gaze.  The "gaze 
target" was a monitor, displaying variously a "keyboard" layout for 
composing text, a "home control centre" layout for turning on/off lights, 
etc and so on.

By fixating for long enough (typically two seconds) on any "letter", that 
character would be added to a string being built at the bottom of the 
monitor.   IIRC all the normal punctuation keys were present but I fail to 
recall how "shift" functions were implemented.

Given today's computing power, the much higher resolution in cameras, etc 
this should continue to be a viable project.   Basically, all the subject 
had to be able to do was move their eyes!   I assumed the role of subject 
for a couple of sessions and found it highly viable as a 
communication/command tool.

Maybe this will help???
Denis