Smart Glasses Detect Eye Contact
From: New Scientist - 05/19/2004
By: Duncan Graham-Rowe

Canadian researchers have developed a pair of sunglasses that use infrared to
determine whether someone is making eye contact with the wearer, an ability
that could prove useful in video blogging. One of the glasses' inventors,
Roel Vertegaal of Queen's University's Media Lab, says the device enables
video bloggers to automatically detect and record conversations and
interactions with other people, which can help mitigate the problem of
editing out dull sections of the video diary. The glasses are outfitted with
a miniature CCD camera on the bridge between the lenses, which is linked to a
handheld computer that processes images. The perimeter of the lenses is
dotted with light emitting diodes that beam infrared light, generating a "red
eye" effect in the eyes of anyone facing the camera. The light reflected off
the cornea produces a glint that the system looks for; if the glint is
positioned in the very center of the pupil, then the system infers that the
person is looking directly at the wearer. People must be no more than one
meter away from the wearer for the system to be effective, but the
researchers are trying to expand its range to four meters in the next
iteration. Vertegaal's team is investigating whether eye-contact detection
technology could be used to determine whether a person is too busy to take a
phone call, and have designed an icon that would be displayed on the caller's
phone to signal that the person they are trying to contact is occupied. 

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995015