sults for eye contours, due to the slight movement of the phone in the user’s hand; interestingly, the false positives, all of which were based on coordinates significantly smaller than true eye contours, seemed to closely follow the contours of the user’s face. To overcome these false positive results, the Dartmouth researchers created a filtering algorithm that identified the likely size of a legitimate eye contour. The new eye-detection algorithm resulted in accuracy rates of 60% when a user was walking in daylight, to 99% when the phone was steady in daylight. The blink detection algorithm’s accuracy rate ranged from 67% to 84% in daylight.

Campbell believes the steady prog-
ress in increasing camera resolution
and processing capabilities on mobile
phones will lead to more accuracy over
time. “Things like changes in lighting
and movement really destroy some of
these existing algorithms,” he says.
“Solving some of these context prob-
lems will allow these ideas to mature,
and somebody’s going to come along
with a really smart idea for it.”
However, veterans of eye-tracking
research do not foresee a wave of eyes-
only mobile device control anytime
soon, even with improved algorithms.
Instead, the eye-tracking capabilities
on mobile devices might become part
and parcel of a more context-aware net-
work infrastructure. A phone with eye-
gaze context awareness might be able
to discern things such as the presence
of multiple pairs of eyes watching its
screen and provide a way to notify the le-
gitimate user of others reading over his
or her shoulder. An e-commerce appli-
cation might link a user’s gaze toward
an LED-enabled store window display
to a URL of more information about a
product or coupon for it on the phone.
Campbell says one possible use for such
a phone might be in a car, such as a
dash-mounted phone that could detect
the closing of a drowsy driver’s eyes.

Ball State’s Holmes says such multi-modal concepts are far more realistic than an either/or eye-based input future. “Think about how long people have talked about voice control of computers,” he says. “While the technology has gotten better, context is key. In an open office, you don’t want to hear everybody talk to their computer. Voice command is useful for things like advancing slide

Eye-based user
interfaces on mobile
phones could
provide users with
more options for
controlling their
phones’ applications.

show, but for the most part voice control is a special tool. And while I can see similar situations for eye gaze control, the notion that any one of these alternative input devices will sweep away the rest isn’t going to happen. On the other hand, what is exciting is we are moving into a broader range of alternatives, and the quality of those alternatives is improving, so we have more choices.”

 

Further Reading

Drewes, H.

Eye Gaze Tracking for human Computer Interaction Dissertation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, 2010.

Jacob, R.J.K.

The use of eye movements in human-computer interaction techniques: what you look at is what you get. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 9, 2, April 1991. Majaranta, P. and Räihä, K.-J. Twenty years of eye typing: systems and design issues. Proceedings of the 2002 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications, new Orleans, LA, March 25–27, 2002.

Miluzzo, E., Wang, T. and Campbell, A. T. EyePhone: activating mobile phones with your eyes. Proceedings of the Second ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Networking, Systems, and Applications on Mobile Handhelds, new Delhi, India, August 30, 2010.

Smith, J.D., Vertegaal R., and Sohn, C. ViewPointer: lightweight calibration-free eye tracking for ubiquitous handsfree deixis. Proceedings of the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Seattle, WA, Oct. 23–26, 2005.

Gregory Goth is an oakville, Ct-based writer who specializes in science and technology.

© 2010 aCm 0001-0782/10/1200 $10.00

Career
CS Grads
Are Well
Paid

as the U.s. economy limps
toward a recovery, there’s
some good news for students
launching careers in computer
science and engineering: the
starting pay for college graduates
in those fields is well above
that of many other disciplines,
according to a new report by The
Wall Street Journal.
the study, conducted for the
Journal by payscale.com, shows
that graduates with engineering
degrees earned an average
starting salary of $56,000 in
their first full-time jobs out
of college. Computer science
graduates were second,
earning an average salary of
$50,000. By comparison,
people who graduated with
degrees in communications
and english earned $34,000 in
their first jobs.
payscale.com conducted the
survey between april and June
of this year, which included
responses from about 11,000
people who graduated between
1999 and 2010. according to The
Wall Street Journal, the reported
starting pay was adjusted for
inflation to make the salaries of
graduates from different years
comparable.
the survey was conducted as
part of The Wall Street Journal’s
paths to professions project,
which examined a selection of
jobs in careers that were deemed
to be satisfying, well paid, and
having growth potential.

one of the advantages of having a technical degree is that it can be applied to a variety of fields, such as product marketing and advertising, which can increase the marketability of an engineer or computer science major, says Katy piotrowski, a career counselor and owner of Career solutions Group in Fort Collins, Co.

“You can’t really wing technical skills, so if there’s a technical product that needs to be promoted through a marketing activity, there’s more confidence with someone who has a technical pedigree” to be able to understand how the product works, piotrowski says. While technical skills are not valued in every field, such as social work, they do open a lot of doors, she notes.