EyeChess: A Tutorial for Endgames with Gaze-Controlled Pieces

Foreword Welcome to the first COGAIN Conference. Gaze-based communication and interaction is set to expand into new domains and new user communities thanks to the emergence of cheaper measurement systems and an increased understanding of how eye-gaze can be used effectively. As a network in its first year, COGAIN has already shown itself to be a highly effective forum for research exchanges within Europe and beyond. The annual conference is set to become a major international event in the calendar of the research, user and industrial communities associated with gaze-based communication. This first conference sets out the direction and tenor with which this will be achieved. Introduction Many eye tracking systems either require the user to keep their head still or involve cameras or other equipment mounted on the user's head. While acceptable for research applications, these limitations make the systems unsatisfactory for most AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) applications. So-called " remote " eye tracking systems, which allow the user to move their head freely within certain limits, have been available for a while. Traditionally, these systems have used cameras with long focal lengths to obtain a sufficiently high-resolution image of the eye. Because of the narrow field of view, the user's head movements must be compensated for, either by panning and tilting the camera itself or by using a movable mirror. This means that the head movement speed is limited by the speed with which the mechanical system can track the eye. Furthermore, once tracking is lost, reacquiring the eye is difficult because the camera has only a narrow field of view. With recent increases in the resolution of CCD and CMOS cameras, it has become feasible to use fixed cameras with wide field of view for eye tracking. In this approach, the camera covers the whole area within which user's head may move while still imaging the eye with sufficient resolution for eye tracking. One important task in remote eye tracking is measuring the position of the user's eyes. The most straightforward way of doing this is to use two or more cameras so that features in the images can be triangulated to determine their position in space. However, using two cameras instead of one increases the cost and complexity of the system substantially. Cost is of particular concern for AAC applications; in the following, we will therefore investigate the single-camera remote eye tracking problem. While a …