Will the Mouse Go Away?
From: Technology Review - 03/02/2007
By: Kate Greene

An easy-to-operate user interface that tracks eye movement has been developed
as an alternative to the computer mouse by Stanford University doctoral
student Manu Kumar. "Eye-tracking technology was developed for disabled
users, but the work that we're doing here is trying to get it to a point
where it becomes more useful for able-bodied users," Kumar notes. The core
component of Kumar's technology is EyePoint software that requires a person
to stare at an item and hold a "hot key," which triggers magnification of the
area being looked at. Once the user pinpoints her focus in the enlarged area
and releases the hot key, the item is opened. Kumar wrote an algorithm to
compensate for the natural jitter of the user's pupil, and he says the
elimination of cursor control is one the interface's advantages. By combining
eye and hand movement, the interaction becomes more natural. Around 90
percent of the project participants who tested the EyePoint interface said it
was preferable to the mouse, although a 20 percent error rate could be
problematic, according to MIT Media and Arts Technology Laboratory professor
Ted Selker. Although Shumin Zhai of the IBM Almaden Research Center says
Kumar's work is important, he acknowledges the need for users to undergo a
calibration process in which the EyePoint software measures the rapidity of
their eye movement. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18254/

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New Technology Enables Mouse-Free Web Surfing
From: Stanford Daily - 03/14/2007
By: Kelsey Mesher

A Stanford University computer science doctoral student has designed a system
that enables users to interact with software using only their eyes.
Gaze-enhanced User Interface Design uses eye-tracking technology: Infrared
lights implanted in the computer that shine into the user's eyes and a camera
picks up the reflection, which lets the computer know where the user is
looking. Eye-tracking has been used in the past to help the disabled use
computers and to tell Web and software designers what users look at on the
screen and for how long. The system's creator, Manu Kumar, has developed
approximately 10 unique applications for the technology. One application is a
password-entry system in which the user simply looks at the correct letters
on a keyboard that appears on the screen. "It's really easy to see what
[users] are typing, but hard to tell where they are looking," Kumar said.
"[By using the eye-tracking software,] people can't do shoulder surfing."
Tests have shown that the eye-tracking software is easy to learn and to use. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/article/2007/3/14/newTechnologyEnablesMousefreeWebSurfing

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Links:
Manu Kumar
http://hci.stanford.edu/research/GUIDe/people.html

Gaze-enhanced User Interface design
http://www.sneaker.org/
http://hci.stanford.edu/research/GUIDe/
http://www.cs.stanford.edu/research/spotlight?page=1

Ted Selker
http://web.media.mit.edu/~selker/
http://www.media.mit.edu/people/bio_selker.html

Shumin Zhai
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/zhai/
http://vered.rose.utoronto.ca/people/Shumin.html