Design, Implementation, and Performance Study of an Open Source Eye-Control System to Pilot a Parrot AR.Drone Quadrocopter
Natural user interface is a fairly new concept in the field of human-computer interaction. It is the idea of using every day natural human behaviors and actions to control a device. An example of a natural user interface is touch control technology in smartphones, tablets, and new laptops. The interaction is more direct when compared to artificial input devices like a keyboard and mouse. Though natural user interface devices might not perform as well as standard input devices for certain applications, for other applications they are now the de facto standard. A new user interface that is poised to be the next natural user interface in human-computer interaction is eye-control, or the ability to control an interface with just the user’s eyes using technology that has been around for a long time called eye trackers. The problem for much of the existence of eye trackers is the cost. Most modern commercial eye trackers cost anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000, and that is too expensive for regular consumers to buy and use. In this paper, we build a low cost system for eye-control using an open source program called ITU Gaze Tracker. In the process, we developed an interface which allows a user to pilot a Parrot AR.Drone quadrocopter using just their gaze. In this explorative study, we explore the performance of this eye-control system to keyboard control in the operation of an AR.Drone around an obstacle course. We collected certain performance metrics like lap completion time,
eye control, eye tracking, performance, quadrocopter, Natural User Interface (NUI), Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
City University of New York - City College
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