First Eye Tracking Upgrade for Augmented Reality Glasses

SMI Shows First Eye Tracking Upgrade for Augmented Reality Glasses

SensoMotoric Instrument (SMI) adds eye tracking to Epson Moverio BT-200 for hands-free interaction, gaze sensitive on-demand content, and personalized visualization in augmented reality.

BOSTON and TELTOW, Germany, August 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

At the 2015 Siggraph Conference, SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) shows the world's first Eye Tracking Integration for augmented reality, based on Epson's Moverio BT-200 see-through head mounted display and on SMI's mobile eye tracking platform. With this new solution, unprecedented quality and efficiency is brought to personalized visualization and to multi-modal, hands-free interaction with context-sensitive displays. For the first time, professionals and researchers can integrate gaze, and visual attention in AR applications.

[caption id="attachment_310" align="aligncenter" width="500"] First Eye Tracking Upgrade for Augmented Reality Glasses[/caption]

SMI will demonstrate the solution at Siggraph in Los Angeles, booth 1022, August 11-13, 2015.

One critical component for a good AR user experience is the ability to accurately overlay and add content to objects, as if pinning it to them. To achieve this, precise knowledge about the users' physiognomy and gaze is required. SMI's advanced eye tracking algorithms offer this quality and add continuous adaption of the visualization to the user's biometric information, replacing current cumbersome and error-prone display calibration routines.

Visual orientation, search and inspection procedures are often crucial, yet error-prone, tasks in manufacturing, logistics, technical service, medical and other professional fields. Gaze-sensitive information processing supports tasks by exploiting the user's attention, e.g. by providing "in-the-loop" gaze guidance during procedures that are quality-sensitive and visually complex. This can be done by structuring, guiding and monitoring the search, and the visual intake progress. Eye tracking enables objective assessment and documentation of what is seen. Gaze overlay also allows for transfer of expertise and can make expert knowledge and procedures explicit and transparent to others.

With eye tracking in AR Displays, context sensitive information can be provided to the user exactly when he needs it, where he needs it. Superimposing information and instructions onto real objects gives the user access to instant 'at-a-glance' and on-demand information, such as condition of cargo, health data of patients, or performance data of machines. SMI's eye tracking integration into multimodal interaction helps to realize convenient, hands-free device and application operation in these challenging situations and environments.

"I believe that eye-tracking is one of the last remaining critical interaction mechanisms that will enable digital eyewear to be intuitive for end users and SMI is the clear leader in this space," says Pete Wassell, CEO and Co-Founder of Augmate.

Professor Dr. Thomas Schack, who leads the research group "Neurocognition and Action - Biomechanics" (NCA) at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interactive Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University: "SMI's AR eye tracking is the technology platform that helps us realize a unique research project at CITEC, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. ADAMAAS focuses on the development of a mobile adaptive assistance system in the form of intelligent glasses."

"SMI Eye Tracking for Augmented Reality Glasses completes our broad range of innovative eye tracking solutions for researchers and developers," says Eberhard Schmidt, Managing Director at SMI. "Many AR applications need and will greatly benefit from eye tracking for visualization and interaction purposes. With this latest addition, our eye tracking platform spans all relevant display categories from desktop over handheld and mobile to HMD and Smartglasses for VR and AR. According to market researchers, the AR smartglass market will grow tremendously to 100 million units in 2018 and it will be as big as the smartphone market in 10 years. We think that eye tracking will be of critical importance to equip AR devices and applications with the high-quality user experience to reach such numbers."

The SMI AR Eye Tracking upgrade package to the Moverio BT-200 comes with an SDK for easy creation of and integration with applications for the rapidly growing smart glasses and augmented reality applications market. Among other functionalities, the SMI SDK allows access to real-time streaming of gaze data synchronized with the AR display content.

- Cross reference: Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com )

About SMI

SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) is a world leader in eye tracking technology, developing and marketing eye & gaze tracking solutions for scientists and professionals, OEM and medical solutions for a wide range of applications. Find out more at www.smivision.com. Follow @SMIeyetracking on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

News Release Source : SMI Shows First Eye Tracking Upgrade for Augmented Reality Glasses
Image Credit : SensoMotoric Instrument (SMI)

Intelligent Augmented Reality glasses designed for professors

Intelligent glasses designed for professors

This news release is available in Spanish.

The proposed system (Augmented Lecture Feedback System – ALFs) seeks to improve communication between students and professors during large lecture classes like those frequently given at universities. The way they work is quite intuitive: the professor wears a pair of augmented reality glasses that enable him/her to see symbols above each student; the symbols indicate the person's state while this activity is taking place. "These symbols are activated by the students via their cell phones and are used to tell the professor that they don't understand the explanation, or that they have understood it, to ask the professor to go more slowly, or to say whether or not they know the answer to the question that the professor has just asked the class," explains one of the researchers from UC3M's Grupo de Sistemas Interactivos (Interactive Systems Group), Telmo Zarraonandia. This way, the professor knows, simply by looking at the symbol a student has displayed over his/her head, exactly what that student wishes to communicate to him/her. In addition, on the upper part of the glasses, the system shows a diagram with the aggregate of the answers given by the students, which can be particularly useful in large groups.

[caption id="attachment_289" align="aligncenter" width="619"] Intelligent Augmented Reality glasses designed for professors[/caption]

The main advantage of this device is that students have a new way to communicate that enables them to be in contact with the professor both immediately and privately, and without interrupting the class. "The channel that we've created will help overcome the problems of timidity or fear of speaking in front of the class that some students have", points out one of the researchers, Ignacio Aedo, a tenured professor in UC3M's Computer Science department. This way, the professor has a source of immediate information on what the students are grasping from his/her presentation. "The hope is that this system will make for more effective lecture classes, because receiving greater feedback, continuously, will allow the professor to adapt the class based on the students' actual knowledge and understanding, giving extra examples, varying the rhythm or skipping those parts of the lesson that the students indicate that they already know or remember," concludes Aedo. Moreover, through the glasses, the system allows the professor to visualize notes or comments that s/he doesn't want to forget to mention at specific moments, and which s/he can introduce in the system prior to the class.

Education of the future

The architecture of the system is described in a scientific article published in the British Journal of Educational Technology in a special monographic edition dedicated to the education of the future. The prototype that these researchers have developed is controlled by gestures, captured with a Microsoft Kinect; using these gestures, the professor selects the support slide for an explanation, or activates predetermined questions to which the students respond by displaying a variety of symbols that they select using their cell phones. The system can identify the students using facial recognition (by previously loading their photographs to a database) or, in larger groups, by using a positioning system based on markers.

In order for the students to be able to select the symbols, they just have to connect their cell phones to the server where the system is installed. The professor, on the other hand, just needs a pair of augmented reality glasses. "Because of their ability to display information on the user's field of vision, these devices have the potential to change the way in which we carry out many of our daily tasks, as well as offering many interesting possibilities from a research point of view," comments Telmo Zarraonandia. Currently, the various models of augmented reality glasses are costly and not very ergonomic because they are too heavy and make it difficult for the professor to move, but "it is hoped that in the next few years new models will come onto the market and these will be suitable for use in class, as might be the case with the new Google glasses, which could be adapted to this system," points out Ignacio Aedo.

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This research is part of TIPEx (Information Technologies for Planning and Training in Emergencies), a project that has been funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Economy and Competitivity Ministry) in which researchers from the Universidad Politécnica of Valencia and the Universidad Pablo de Olavide also participate; the project examines how augmented reality and other technologies can be applied to the area of emergency management.

Further information:

Title: An augmented lecture feedback system to support learner and teacher communication Authors: Telmo Zarraonandia, Ignacio Aedo, Paloma Díaz, Álvaro Montero Journal: British Journal of Educational Technology. Volume: 44. Number: 4. July 2013 Article published on-line 4 June 2013 DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12047http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.2013.44.issue-4/issuetoc

VIDEO: http://youtu.be/sNHFhL034F4

News Release Source : Intelligent glasses designed for professors