Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Inspirational machine vision work


This is a machine vision application that I actually found quite inspiring, and if that sounds sarcastic, well it’s not intended that way. What I’m talking about is “Gaze tracking” – using a camera to determine where a person is looking, and the intended application is to enable the severely disabled to communicate.

Read my Eyes, a presentation of the ITU Gaze Tracker” is a movie showing just what the system can do. There’s not a lot of technical detail in the movie: that’s because it’s intended just to promote awareness of the work. The key components apparently are a webcam and an IR light; the software is available for free. You can learn more by going to the main page at www.gazegroup.org .

I’ve read about Gaze Trackers before but have seemed to ever make it into production. I hope this turns out differently because I really believe it has huge potential for quality of life improvement.

No comments: