Development of the eye input device using eye movement obtained by measuring the center position of the pupil

In this study, we propose a novel eye input device using only eye movement without the calibration for correcting the gaze direction. The traditional eye input device using eye positional information requires head movement. However, the severely disabled people who are unable to move their head, e.g. amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, are difficult to use this device. Although an eye-gaze input device does not require the head movement, the calibration for correction of the gaze direction induces the degradation of usability. In this paper, we propose the eye input device using the eye movement derived from the relative position of the pupil. The proposed system allows users to control a cursor of a personal computer using only eye movement. The cursor control method using the length and direction of the eye movement vector connecting from the reference point to the center position of pupil eliminates the calibration for the gaze direction correction and the head movement control. The experiments were performed to evaluate the operational performance and usability of the proposed eye input device. From experimental results, the operation time of the proposed eye input device became shorter with the increase of trial numbers. Furthermore, the parameter setting for individual improved the operational performance of the eye input device.