Surfing Google earth with your eye

[Keyvan Hadjari]

I am developing a Google earth application which lets user interact with eye-tracking device. Big problem for me is the gaze start jumping around very fast and wont let user feel the control over interaction. Wondering if anyone have find a solution to slowdown or smooth the movement and if there is any function to provide more points that fill the gaps between the actual target point.

[Anders]

Hi Keyvan,
since I don’t know exactly what your idea of interacting with Google Earth by eye-gaze is, I can just come up with a hand-wavy answer: try to filter the gaze point data, using for example a moving average filter, to get a smoother signal.

If you’re using the EyeX SDK then you can try the lightly filtered data stream instead of the unfiltered one. But the lightly filtered stream might still be too noisy for your needs. Finding the filter parameters that are just right can be difficult but it’s usually necessary for a good user experience.

It would be nice to see what you come up with. Maybe there are other developers out there as well that would benefit from a really smooth gaze data stream.

[Marcos Gogolin]

Hi Keyvan,
I am not sure how you wish to use it… but I volunteer for a young man with cerebral palsy, and I believe he would feel very liberating with something like that to be able to gaze the earth 🙂 Please keep me posted!

Regards, MG

[Keyvan Hadjari]

Hi Marcos,

I will be more than happy to get you a copy of the software for testing.
to be more clear about what the software do I should add; it is using a eyeX or x2-30 eye-tracker to map user gaze on the Google-earth. by moving the gaze Google-earth rotating and let the target point move to center. I am working to fix a filtering problem and I let you know as soon as it is finished.

Actual meaning of developing this application was to test how can we use just gaze to control and interact with computer as natural as possible.

Btw, what is your profession?

[Marcos Gogolin]

I am a part time teacher at TasTAFE with multimedia, CAD and 3D printing. At times I volunteer as a student counselor… some information on what I am volunteering at:
https://www.facebook.com/2013EAL211

[Marcos Gogolin]

Are you aware of any apps like that, for G-earth? Is Google helping you??

[Keyvan Hadjari]

Not really I did not find any app like it. I design and develop it by myself. Google has nothing to do with it. I try to get in touch with them but it is not easy. may I have your email address? or Skype?

regards
/Keyvan

[Keyvan Hadjari]

Hi Anders,

Thanks for your reply, I think by nature its hard to make eye movement smooth. I will try some usual filtering method and will put the result back here.

The first try was to use a mean value for last 16 samples with 700ms interval. It was better but not the best;

The second approach is to remove unreal samples out first then calculate mean value; with a QA it may work much better.

[Marcos Gogolin]

Sorry for the late reply Keyvan… my educational email as follows [email protected]

I look forward to hearing from you.

[JeffKang]

Maybe you can message Olav Hermansen, a person who made an interface to navigate Google Earth with eye tracking and speech recognition.

http://olavz.com/rule-the-world-with-eye-tracking-speech-recognition/

Perhaps he can give some tips.

[Keyvan Hadjari]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for sharing the link, I see how Olav combines eye-tracking and voice recognition to avoid the problem I have. Very nice but my requirement is to surfing Google-earth just by your gaze in user-friendly and natural/ergonomic way.

[JeffKang]

moving the gaze Google-earth rotating and let the target point move to center

Cool! I’m not sure how rotating would work. Assuming you’ve stopped rotating though, moving the viewport and screen to make the point of gaze more near the center sounds useful and natural.

It would be just like the eye-tracking demos that have a window automatically scroll down when your gaze reaches the bottom of the window. In the case of Google maps, or Google Earth, all the edges come into play, and different parts of the edges would have different degrees of movement.

A faster navigation option might be to latch onto the nearest notable location or landmark, and make that the center.

(I just opened Google Earth on my tablet, and you see a whole bunch of bus stops scattered around. There probably needs to be a two-step process (magnification, or projection of the bus-stop elements into larger interface elements: http://i.imgur.com/3erfG6K.png) to pick the exact one that you want to center on).

For rotating, maybe you can activate a widget that ceases movement by way of changing your location. The edges then instead become controls that manipulate the pitch and yaw.

As for navigating in Google Street view, check out “Controlling a PlayStation with your eyes: ‘Infamous: Second Son’ | GDC 2014” at the 33 second mark: http://youtu.be/kKYr9MaZw3I?t=33s

Anyways, good luck!

[Keyvan Hadjari]

Old fashion way to survey and find a spot on a map is to get the known address into your focused area like when you are looking for a village near Paris; you get start looking for Paris first.

As a matter of fact our brain works exactly like that, we get familiar faces to recognize then memorize new and less related figures. When you do that you make your memories connected to each other like roads on a map and these helps you to find your wanted information easier later.

try to use a real globe and find your favorite spots to get what I mean. It’s really cool to test obvious things sometimes 🙂

[Marcos Gogolin]

Hi Keyvan,
How are things.. and how are you for time…
May I introduce you to my friend and teaching coleague Matt Daniels — He will take over from me during my emergency departure due to family issues. Matt has now the Tobiin unit, and possess the right background for the job! If that is ok, intend to email him you email address, and provide him with the link here so he can join in. Please keep me in the loop as I hope to help as I can…

Take care,
Marcos

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