Performing Locomotion Tasks in Immersive Computer Games with an Adapted Eye-Tracking Interface

Abstract

Young people with severe physical disabilities may benefit greatly from participating in immersive computer games. In-game tasks can be fun, engaging, educational, and socially interactive. But for those who are unable to use traditional methods of computer input such as a mouse and keyboard, there is a barrier to interaction that they must first overcome. Eye-gaze interaction is one method of input that can potentially achieve the levels of interaction required for these games. How we use eye-gaze or the gaze interaction technique depends upon the task being performed, the individual performing it, and the equipment available. To fully realize the impact of participation in these environments, techniques need to be adapted to the person's abilities. We describe an approach to designing and adapting a gaze interaction technique to support locomotion, a task central to immersive game playing. This is evaluated by a group of young people with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. The results show that by adapting the interaction technique, participants are able to significantly improve their in-game character control.

User-Defined Game Input for Smart Glasses in Public Space

“…Vickers et al [40] showed the possibility to use eye gestures as game inputs; Christian et al [8] provided novel techniques for users to interact with games by head-gesture; Harada et al [18] and Sporka et al [36] both indicated that the voice input greatly expanded the scope of games that could be played hands-free and just counted on voice input; Baba et al [4] presented a game prototype which treated skin contact as controller input; Nacke et al [30] even considered using biofeedback (including EMG, EDA, EKG, RESP, TEMP) as game input methods; Hsu et al [21] compared different game inputs, including head gestures, voice control, handheld controller, joysticks, eye winking and glass touchpad, for First-Person Shooter(FPS) games on smart glasses.…”

Effects of auditory, haptic and visual feedback on performing gestures by gaze or by hand

“…However, there is a lot of research on gaze gestures demonstrating its potential for various scenarios and tasks. For example, gaze gestures can be used for text entry (Wobbrock et al 2008), computer control (Porta and Turina 2008), gaming (Vickers, Istance, and Hyrskykari 2013) or drawing (Heikkilä 2013). People can also browse objects on a remote smart screen by gazing sideways (Zhang, Bulling, and Gellersen 2013), or select moving objects by matching their gaze movement with the movement of the object (Vidal et al 2013).…”

Stakeholder consensus for decision making in eye-gaze control technology for children, adolescents and adults with cerebral palsy service provision: findings from a Delphi study

“…This technology holds the potential to unlock people's capacity to participate in leisure and productivity pursuits, play games, listen to music, use social media, and for environmental control. For individuals with communication difficulties, it can also offer access to specialist software for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) [8,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Eyegaze control technology involves an infra-red camera, which works in conjunction with specialised software, to monitor and respond to a user's eye movements [18].…”