Interview with Dr Aldo Faisal on developing an eye movement tracker that enables patients who are movement impaired to operate an ordinary computer.

Dr Aldo Faisal is a lecturer in neurotechnology, jointly based in the Departments of Bioengineering and Computing. Neurotechnology fuses together the principles of neuroscience and engineering and the Faisal lab was set up two and a half years ago to understand the brain in terms of its engineering design principles and apply this knowledge to technology. As a result, researchers have developed an eye movement tracker that enables patients who are movement impaired to operate an ordinary computer.

How did you come across this idea?

The brain can move the body as long as it is operational. But when the links break down due to injury, old age or illnesses such as Parkinson’s, MS or stroke, we need another way to harness the brain’s power to interact with the world – for example, by controlling computers or wheelchairs. Curiously, eye movements are not affected by these types of motor disorders and readily convey a person’s interaction intentions by how they observe an object or the environment, so we looked at using them to interact and control things.

How does this work?

We have two small cameras mounted into framed spectacles, which allows us to observe where your eyes are looking. If you’re looking at a computer screen and want to interact with the computer, we simply make the mouse cursor follow your eyes on the screen and a wink enables the click of the mouse. In a test, we asked subjects to play fast-paced arcade video games and, excitingly, we saw that people who used this system for the first time for just 10 minutes could reach the performance level of able-bodied players within a 15 per cent range.

How does this differ from what is currently on the market?

Measuring eye movements is not a new concept but systems typically cost tens of thousands of pounds. We have reverse-engineered video game hardware, aiming to maximise the performance of cheap cameras by using smart software, allowing us to make systems costing less than £40. A recent study by the NHS showed that over five million people in the UK alone would benefit from our eye tracking hardware and software, so there is clear low-cost, high-volume commercial potential.

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