This year’s Eye Tracking Research and Applications Conference (ETRA2010) is held in Austin, Texas. This is the premier gathering event for eye tracking researchers worldwide. The very interesting keynote speech was given by Scott MacKenzie with focus on using the eye as a control device in human-computer interfaces. This was also the main topic of this year’s conference. As Dr MacKenzie described, the eye serves primarily as a sensor but using it to control computer interfaces (e.g. click on an icon by looking at it) is also possible. More and more research is devoted to this matter.

The poster session took place in the afternoon. I presented our poster that describes research on using pupil diameter measures to estimate the cognitive load of the driver. Lots of people were interested to hear that remote eyetracking can provide precise pupillometric data. The full text of our paper can be found here.

It was great to hear the feedback on our research by experts in the field of eye tracking. The bulk of the suggestions were focused on controlling lighting conditions, the change of which can induce noise in our cognitive load measures. We have already done mean illumination assessment of the driving scenario, which showed changes that were under 5%, but refining this assessment on the area where the subjects are focusing could provide even better proof of illumination not affecting the estimation of cognitive load.

The conference continues with exciting demonstrations, exhibitions and paper presentations. A must attend event for the eyetracking enthusiast.

Oszkar

On the 25th of February Dr Marko Popovic gave a talk at UNH in the series of Graduate Seminar lectures of the ECE department (ECE900). The title of the lecture was: “Many Endeavors a Few Successes; an Ordinary Story of the 21st Century ‘Renaissance’ = Multidisciplinary Researcher”.

This lecture was geared towards graduate students who might be in front of some important career decisions. Dr Popovic talked about his experience of finishing his PhD in physics at Boston University and the following years spent at MIT as a researcher. Among other appointments, he worked at MIT’s Biomechatronics Group on walking biped robot simulations. Using cameras, human movements were captured and used in biped dynamics models. Based on these Dr Popovic studied the true influence of the Zero Moment Point on biped robot stability.

Marko sees his career so far as a series of multidisciplinary research engagements. He gave some very good advices to student at the beginning of their careers: be bold and venture out of you comfort zone in order to achieve great goals. I would like to thank Dr Popovic for visiting our lab and giving a great lecture.

Oszkar

This really looks like Wii on steroids! I have recently stumbled upon Microsoft’s Project Natal for Xbox. Their slogan is “You are the controller” which is really appropriate. The system uses full body motion, facial and speech recognition in order to improve the sensation while playing a video game. This means that no electro-mechanical controllers are required, but rather everything is done using different body parts. Plus, more than one person can participate in the game. If you are interested, take a look at this video. It really looks like it has a potential to revolutionize a new way of gaming.

Zeljko Medenica