Playing With Your Eyes

Imagine living with paralysis, unable to speak or move. The only way you have to communicate with the outside world is with your eyes.

Now imagine new technologies that allow you to use your eyes to type and surf the Web. By looking up or down, blinking or staring, you can cause a computer to do whatever you want.

Even better, imagine eye-gaze technology linked to multi-user games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. Now, instead of a useless body you "live" as an avatar, looking and acting just like anyone else. You can drop in on a cocktail party, pick up a sword and slay a baddie, meet eligible singles ... in short, you can take part in life, even if it's not the three-dimensional real deal.

The new technology that allows "locked-in" individuals to game online is called gaming-with-gaze software, and it's publicly available for free. It's one of several ideas to come out COGAIN, and EU-funded network that coordinates the work of developers interested in gaze and eye-tracking technologies.

Gaming-with-gaze software works with commercially available eye trackers, and different patterns of eye movements are translated into "gaze gestures." Each gesture — up, down, stare, and so forth — triggers movements or action commands.

The software can be used with any game that uses mouse and keyboard inputs. To communicate with other players, eye-gaze users gaze at letters on an onscreen visual keyboard.

Aulikki Hyrskykari is a researcher at Tampere University and one of the creators of Gaming with Gaze. He notes that access to Second Life could mean much more than entertainment. The website, for example, offers services and education to participants.

Photo courtesy of StockXChange.