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InterFACES: the human face of assistive technologies


Group Leaders: Dr Mick Donegan (eyetracking expert), Dr Brian Duffy (Robotics & HCI expert), Professor Lizbeth Goodman (Educational and Performance/Communications Technology expert)
Team: James Brosnan, Clilly Castiglia, Sandy Ana Fuentes, Dr Anthony Hornof, Toby Borland, Turlif Vilbrandt, Dr Brian Dillon, Dr Gary McDarby

Work underway includes the next iteration of the Inter-FACES project, co-directed by Professor Goodman with Dr Mick Donegan who joins the team from the Oxford ACE Centre, where he has pushed the boundaries of eye-tracking technologies for assistive tech and user empowerment. The team as a whole now includes professors and associate researchers, along with a group of research students, working in the multi-disciplinary domain of Assistive Technology interfaces for gaming on a universal design platform, along with new research into bio-affective feedback triggers for movement and ‘control’ in virtual worlds and game environments (including learning environments).

We are testing the effectiveness of available tools for using eye movement as a control mechanism for communications by people with little or no other voluntary muscle movement.

With collaborator James Brosnan, the ‘alpha user’ of the system, we are writing a book including an expert analysis of the health and wellbeing advantages of using an ‘unplugged’ interface system (forthcoming from MIT Press, 2007), as well as an article on the use of the Mytobii system that is being piloted by the team in Dublin and London in 2006, to be presented at the Mutamorphosis special event for the Leonardo anniversary in Prague, November 2007.

The Interfaces team is testing the levels of increased physical comfort and overall well-being of James Brosnan, as his increasing use of Mytobii allows him to sit more comfortably for longer periods of time, and to write faster using the eye click mechanism which the team is customising for his personal use, including links to a bespoke musical and ‘emotional register’ keyboard for quick and easy customisation of communications enabling a ‘new poetics’ of assistive technologies.

We are also testing a range of related assistive technology systems with a view to creating an integrated accessible tech Playbox or toolkit including GPS sensor, bluetooth, gyro-control and click-ogo systems integrated with Mytobii, litewriter and our own customised content boards.

The final link in the communications chain is the aspect of human interaction. James and Lizbeth are engaged in testing the limits and appropriate levels of ‘human connected predictive text’ when Lizbeth uses a keyboard linked to the Mytobii to help type in words and punctuation marks that James begins, but only when they are physically present together and when James can indicate with his eyes which of Lizbeth’s ‘predictions’ is accurate to his exact meaning at any point in time. James has provided an ‘emotional lexicon’ for the music and poetics keyboards, and also a list of key words and phrases that Lizbeth can type in without checking, whereas any more creative or less common word will be checked with James in this duet of the eyes and keys.

We presented our first interactive Inter-FACES with a musical score contributed by James, live in London in July and in Prague in November 2007.