Your Mouse Says No but Your Eyes Say Yes

A Stanford doctoral student is working on a way to keep us from ever burning any calories while computing. Manu Kumar has been hard at work developing a method for navigating computer interfaces by tracking eye movement using a system of infrared LEDs and a high-resolution camera embedded in specialized monitors.

Kumar's method expands on existing technology originally created for disabled users, but introduces two elements: some use of the hand (for instance, to click on a selected link), and an algorithm that corrects for the natural jitter of our eyes.

The full Technology Review article on the subject makes for interesting reading; I particularly like the idea of a document that automatically scrolls as you read, as the system knows how far along you are.

There are currently kinks in the system and it's a bit pricey (Kumar's system costs $25,000), but I wonder how useful even a refined version will be. I know that when I'm reading text and I'm pressed for time my eyes dart around the screen looking for key words and phrases, which could make for some interesting scroll behavior. And we can just forget about games, where I rarely look directly at the item I want to click on, fire at, or whatever. Still, I'm encouraged by a comment from Tufts University professor Robert Jacob, who says "It's almost like magic when it's working. The sensation you get is that the computer's reading your mind, and that's really very powerful."