I'm working on this project about a Human-Computer-Interface to help people with disabilities overcome communication problems using Electrooculography (Eye movements). I'm going to compete in a science and engineering fair and showcase my project. If you have any suggestions about how can I make this better please let me know :)

Check out the video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlgKOV_mn18

For more information visit my website at: http://www.ees.intelsath.com

Luis Cruz

Luis, possible doing something like these Wearable Googles

would be neat.

Just making up the sensors would be really cool.

Of course I think having blink selection would be really a functional asset. If you think about your target patients do they have the use of their hands to push a button? Well if they do then why do they need your HCI (Human Computer Interface). I believe your taget patient does not have use of their hands so they have to have some method of inputting their selection. Some HCI interfaces will have the patient blow into a straw to make their selection. Just monitoring for a eye blink seems obvious.

I hope you get other input and good luck.

Ralph

Hey Ralph!

I finally made it! :) I could adapt some electrodes to some sun glasses and it's working so good that I'm amazed by its reliability and comfortability.

I could do it with maybe just $20 using some materials I bought at walmart, homemade!!

I will upload a new video soon, but check out the picture :)

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/9863/19724910150109063011326.jpg

Luis you are killing me :-), that is so cool, now how about blink selection?

There has to someway of making a selection other than clicking with ones hand.

You are enabling cursor movement by eye position, that is really fantastic, but I want more.

Will you sell me a pair of glasses once you get them refined? I would really like to play around with your concept.

I am thinking of directing a robot (which I do not have) with my eye movement. Now that would be cool.

Essentially I guess I want to replace a joystick controller with eye movement. Maybe a RC car/boat or even a plane how neat would that be. Then maybe a motion sensor on my hands to control speed and of course you should be able to get motion control out of hand movement besides speed.

I wish I had a science fair assignment, I could really get carried away.

You have an ebay account so money transfer would be easy, so make me up a nice pair and we will do some neat experimentations.

How did you do in Colorado?

Ralph

Luis, I know you are looking for ideas for your project and you have a very noble concept to help dis-advantaged people.

But then there are people like me that see your work as being fun.

So here is what I want to do using your concept and your sensor glasses. Actually I have the glasses so if you can make up some good sensors that a user can add to their glasses you will have a great product and you could earn some money from this. I doubt I am the only nut that is picturing controlling a RC car or boat/submarine with their eye movement.

My RC car uses rotary potentiometers on the controller to direct the car front back left right.

So eye up go backwards eye down go frontwards eye left go left eye right go right.

You could also get varying degrees hard left or vary left.

And of course I want to blink to start/stop.

If you can make these up for $25.00 - $30.00 I bet you will sell them.

I would not go much further than just making up the sensors. Possible a schematic and a reference to Nerdkits, so that people could get the tempsensor code to do the controlling. You need to limit your liability and there are copyright concerns with the Nerdkit code.

So how about it, I'll be your first customer.

We don't want to make this a commercial thread so you can reply rhulslander gmail.com

Ralph

Lol sounds a neat idea. Would you give me more details regarding some of your ideas about the commercial part? :)

Ok Luis, you are asking for it when you say " If you have any suggestions about how can I make this better please let me know :)"

First of all let me say again your "Human-Computer-Interface" project is fascinating and that anyone just learning electronics has to read your paper.

You asked me to expand on what I am looking for in replacing a RC controller with a pair of your sensor glasses.

Actually I do not need the glasses just the sensors or the glasses with removable sensors.

In the simplest manifestation I want a optical joystick, currently you have a optical mouse as far as directing the cursor.

Now you say you did not implement vertical movement but you are able to move the cursor vertically to select the letters in your demonstration.

What are you using to select the letters? Are you clicking a mouse button?

So I am looking for a four way optical joystick.

Now from what you have said, that would require a left sensor a right sensor and ground (which I believe you have clipped to your ear lobe correct?) then you would need a left up down sensors and right up down sensors thought most people can not independently look up and down with just one eye. So maybe just a single up and down sensor would work fine.

Now I also want to make a button push (selector) it wold really be cool if there was a left eye left button push and right eye right button push I want to control the button push by blinking.

You are not inducing any voltage but measuring the natural electricity in the human body, which is fascinating in it's own respect.

So I assume your sensors are connected to a op-amp which is connected to the Nerdkit. And then I just assumed you were using a modified tempsensor project code (lot of assumption on my part) outputting to your PC or TV.

As a business model even today there is a market for joysticks imagine just using your eyes in place of a joystick or mouse.

Specifically I have a old RC car from Radio Shack that uses two two way joysticks to control the cars motion.

If I had your sensors connected to the Nerdkit breadboard I would use digital potentiometers in place of the potentiometers on the controller board. Plus I would add eye blink move/stop.

Now to make sure you are not goofing off chasing girls or other things a teen age boy would be doing I want:

RF Power Harvesting to power the Nerdkit. This is just one link if you Google rf power harvesting you will see lots of relavent links of course I also like motion power harvesting where moving your arm back and forth sends this slug through a coil generating electricity.

The Power Harvesting all use some sort of BUCK/BOOST ic. There are some that start with a micro voltage input and boost that to 1.2v which then gets boosted again and again if needed of course the amperage is micro so a capacitor gets charged.

Now that would be cool of course I am also looking for a eye glasses locator you know something like RFID except it buzz a buzzer instead of powering a radio. The RFID field is where a lot of the power harvesting field comes from. There are millions of RFID chips out in the world that are use RF Power Harvesting to energize their radio to send back their identifier.

Ralph

Here's the thing:

1) The circuit itself is a little bit complicated that requires a while to develop. The best way I can think of is making the circuit and selling all the system together (with the sensors), maybe as a kit so anyone can use it for their project's sake. This project is very versatile, so basically anything can be done with it, such as applying your concept.

2) When I say vertical movements, I am referring to the eyes' movements vertically. Adding another set of sensors will enable vertical movements, so blinks can be detected (there's vertical movements when we blink).

3) The eyeboard software works like this: 1) The microcontroller sends a different character to the serial port depending on the eye movements (left or right) 2) A python program reads that character. 3) The C++ program (the eyeboard) works like a matrix. You select the boxes with left movements and when you want to choose the letters inside the box you use right movements. A 4 second delay chooses the letter automatically.

I might put this on my website, so anyone interested on buying it can purchase everything on my website.

Yeah good, it's the selection process I do not like. A blink is so much cleaner, you could/should even make it a one second (or two or three) to make sure random blinks were not taken as a selection. I would really like to have the glasses to see if a blink really is the same as a eye roll (up or down) I have never studied this but I really think they would be distinguishable (not "exactly" the same).

Well I'll be looking at your site for a for sale sign. Maybe the Nerdkits guys will let you put a add on their intro page.

How much of the HCI is truly proprietary? That is exclusively your doing not cobbled from some one else's code base.

You need to take precautions about copyright and patent rights.

But you should be able to sell the glasses and sensor then the connection to the Nerdkit becomes questionable. Your C++ code running on the pc might be yours which you need to declare.

Just publishing a work publically does not make it open source, you have to license it using a open source copyright in order to "legally" give it away.

But all of that being said (and I am not a lawyer) you can do it and I think you could have a really great product.

I said before I'd do $25.00 to $30.00 I might do $50.00 for a comprehensive kit.

Word to the wise sell your tech support do not give it away. 30 days free email support then make them pay.

Of course if the Nerdkit guys did this we would all be up the creek without a paddle but you really cannot give support away especially if you have a single product. If you have multiple items especially ones that people will come back for, then they can help pay for the support.

Of course you have to figure out a way to stop people from replicating your work and giving it away or selling it as their own.

Or at least to limit replication.

So let us know if you put something together I'll be your first customer :-)

Ralph

I'll make sure to put something on my website about it. I can tell you that the code was done entirely by me (except the libraries of the AVR and SDL). That includes the eyeboard software, the python script and also the microcontroller's code.

I think, however, I am using some of the nerdkits' libraries for delays and serial communication, I'm talking about the ones found on the "libnerdkits" folder. Which is just for the analog to digital conversion and the serial communication with the computer. Which can actually be done using other methods. I'd have to investigate a little more about it :p But what I'm actually interested in patenting is the new way I'm building an inexpensive biomedical amplifier and maybe the glasses...

Take your time.

I know you would just like to get this out there and maybe make some money but you have to make sure and cover your backside.

Using other libraries is/should be allowable but you have to tread cautiously.

Of course I could always do some preliminary pre-release testing for you.

I am really just interested in being able to send signals to the Nerdkit breadboard ADC and pin change interrupt.

That would give me all of the input I need to control my RC car (with my modifications to the controller).

I am surprised nobody else is interested in having a optically controlled joystick.

Ralph

Hi lcruz007,

Your project is really interesting, about a year ago I knew a man named Frank who had ALS and just about in the middle of his diagnosis, when it was starting to get really bad, he could only communicate with a computer and a webcam that would track some sort of dot on his head in between his eyes. And the dot would move a curser around the screen. But sadly as the disease worsened it became useless becuase he lost control of his neck to move his head.I was always very interested on how that worked but maybe someday when you get this thing working it will help poeple who really cant communicate like he couldnt. I wish he had something like this that he could use to communicate and talk. I really like the idea that you have and I think this could really help a lot of people with disabilities. Your device could go big if you keep the price down possibly. But its just a suggestion.

• missle3944

@Ralph: Stay tunned! :D I'll make sure to keep you updated of any further improvements and anything else regarding commercializing this idea. This is a very versatile project, so anything is possible. I'll just make sure to finish the state competition in Colorado though, which is in April 7th =P And I'll upload a new video with the glasses as well anytime soon(just made the version of the glasses with clear lenses).

@missle3944: Thanks for your comment. I'm glad to hear that you're interested on this technology and believe that it can accomplish its goal which is to help some people overcome communication problems. The professional technology available is way to expensive, and not everyone can afford it. The goal of this project was to help people with disabilities have access to it at a very low cost (just with simple eye movements)... While similar technology cost $8,000 or more, I managed to build this system with just hundreds... If I find anyway to commercialize it, I can tell you that this system can easily be available for $200.00 or even less for the public!

Hey there! Here's the new video I promised!! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7yVlP2vzeE