Howell O. Istance

Tampere University | UTA · Faculty of Communication Sciences

Decades of research in environmental psychology have shown that contact with natural environments has restorative, stress-ameliorating effects. At present, researchers in the emerging field of virtual natural environments are studying whether these restorative health effects can be reproduced with simulated environments, raising new possibilities f...

Saliency extraction is a technique inspired by the human approach in processing a selected portion of the visual information received. This feature in the human visual system helps reduce the processing the brain needs to extract important information and neglect general and unimportant information. This paper presents a novel approach to identifyi...

We present a study comparing physiological and psychological restoration in matched real and virtual natural environments. Participants (n=24) experienced a real forest, or one of two audiovisual virtual forests wearing a head-mounted display: A 3D forest or a 360-degree video. The results showed that some of the benefits of the real forest could a...

Pie charts can be regularly found both in the popular media and research publications. There is evidence that other forms of visualizations make it easier to evaluate the relative order of the data items. Doughnut charts have been suggested as a variation that has advantages over pie charts. We investigated how pie charts and doughnut charts are af...

On-line teaching situations where a tutor and their students are remote from each other mean that contact between them is reduced compared with teaching in a classroom. We report an initial study of two-way gaze sharing between a tutor and a group of students, who were in different locations. A 45-min class consisted of an introductory lecture foll...

We present an investigation of sharing the focus of visual attention between two players in a collaborative game, so that where one player was looking was visible to the other. The difference between using head-gaze and eye-gaze to estimate the point of regard was studied, the motive being that recording head-gaze is easier and cheaper than eye-gaz...

We present an investigation of sharing the focus of visual attention between two players in a collaborative game, so that where one player was looking was visible to the other. The difference between using head-gaze and eye-gaze to estimate the point of regard was studied, the motive being that recording head-gaze is easier and cheaper than eye-gaz...

Tracking the head in a video stream is a common thread seen within computer vision literature, supplying the research community with a large number of challenging and interesting problems. Head pose estimation from monocular cameras is often considered an extended application after the face tracking task has already been performed. This often invol...

Collaboration improves efficiency, avoids duplication of efforts, improves goal-awareness, and makes working generally more pleasurable. While collaboration is desirable, it introduces additional costs because of the required coordination. In this article, we study how visual search is affected by gaze-sharing collaboration. There is evidence that...

The recent growth in low-cost eye-tracking systems makes it feasible to incorporate real-time measurement and analysis of eye position data into activities such as learning to read. It also enables field studies of reading behavior in the classroom and other learning environments. We present a study of the data quality provided by two remote eye tr...

To use eye trackers in a school classroom, children need to be able to calibrate their own tracker unsupervised and on repeated occasions. A game designed specifically around the need to maintain their gaze in fixed locations was used to collect calibration and verification data. The data quality obtained was compared with a standard calibration pr...

Several popular visualizations of gaze data, such as scanpaths and heatmaps, can be used independently of the viewing task. For a specific task, such as reading, more informative visualizations can be created. We have developed several such techniques, some dynamic and some static, to communicate the reading activity of children to primary school t...

Gaze gestures are deliberate patterns of eye movements that can be used to invoke commands. These are less reliant on accurate measurement and calibration than other gaze-based interaction techniques. These may be used with wearable displays fitted with eye tracking capability, or as part of an assistive technology. The visual stimuli in the inform...

Presentation aids, such as the laser pointer, are commonly used in lectures and public speeches. Their effect on the audience has not been properly studied. We present an experiment that compares several pointer alternatives. One of them is GazeLaser, a new solution that does not need a manually operated pointer, but is based on the lecturers' gaze...

We aim to identify the salient objects in an image by applying a model of visual attention. We automate the process by predicting those objects in an image that are most likely to be the focus of someone's visual attention. Concretely, we first generate fixation maps from the eye tracking data, which express the ground truth of people's visual atte...

Abstract—Machine vision is still a challenging topic and attracts researchers to carry out researches in this field. Efforts have been placed to design machine vision systems (MVS) that are inspired by human vision system (HVS). Attention is one of the important properties of HVS, with which the human can focus only on part of the scene at a time;...

Abstract—Machine vision is still a challenging topic and attracts researchers to carry out researches in this field. Efforts have been placed to design machine vision systems (MVS) that are inspired by human vision system (HVS). Attention is one of the important properties of HVS, with which the human can focus only on part of the scene at a time;...

Saliency or salient region extraction from images is still a challenging field as it needs some understanding of the image and its nature. A technique that is suitable for some applications is not necessarily useful in other applications, thus, saliency identification is dependent upon the application. Based on a survey of existing methods of salie...

Abstract— Saliency or Salient region extraction from images is still a challenging field as it needs some understanding of the image and its nature. A technique that is suitable for some applications is not necessarily useful in other applications, thus, saliency enhancement is application-oriented. Based on a survey of existing methods of saliency...

Traditionally, devices which are able to determine a users gaze are large, expensive and often restrictive. We investigate the prospect of using common webcams and mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and phones without modification as an alternative means for obtaining a users gaze. A person's gaze can be fundamentally determined by the pose of...

In computer vision applications it is necessary to extract the regions of interest in order to reduce the search space and to improve image contents identification. Human-Oriented Regions of Interest can be extracted by collecting some feedback from the user. The feedback usually provided by the user by giving different ranks for the identified reg...

Saliency or Salient regions extractions form images is still a challenging field since it needs some understanding for the image and the nature of the image. The technique that is suitable in some application is not necessarily useful in other application, thus, saliency enhancement is application oriented. In this paper, a new technique of extract...

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 o...

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 o...

Current approaches to enabling access to computer games are typically fragmentary, and may involve manual expert configuration of the game, or of the input or output devices used. We present work towards a comprehensive software framework to facilitate dynamic adaptation of computer games to different levels of physical and cognitive abilities. The...

Computer game based learning approach has been described as an established means of educating players in an engaging and fun environment. One of the most important and challenging areas in this regard is how to design games to raise awareness of health issues in groups of younger children. It is expected that the game must be fun and engaging, and...

It is difficult for some sets of users with physical disabilities to operate standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse. Eye gaze technologies and more specifically gaze gestures are emerging to assist such users. There is a high level of inter and intra user variation in the ability to perform gaze gestures due to the high levels of noise...

The two cardinal problems recognized with gaze-based interaction techniques are: how to avoid unintentional commands, and how to overcome the limited accuracy of eye tracking. Gaze gestures are a relatively new technique for giving commands, which has the potential to overcome these problems. We present a study that compares gaze gestures with dwel...

Gaze-based interaction techniques have been investigated for the last two decades, and in many cases the evaluation of these has been based on trials with able-bodied users and conventional usability criteria, mainly speed and accuracy. The target user group of many of the gaze-based techniques investigated is, however, people with different types...

On its seventh occasion, it is our pleasure to bring ETRA 2012 to Santa Barbara, CA. The series of ETRA symposiums has become the leading international conference in eye tracking technology and its applications, bringing together people from a wide range of backgrounds. Authors have been encouraged to submit papers on topics such as advances in eye...

In this chapter, we examine systems that use the current focus of a person's visual attention to make the system easier to use, less effortful and, hopefully, more efficient. If the system can work out which object the person is interested in, or is likely to interact with next, then the need for the person to deliberately point at, or otherwise id...

This paper introduces the concept of enabling gaze-based interaction for users with high-level motor disabilities to control an avatar in a first-person perspective on-line community. An example community, Second Life, is introduced that could offer disabled users the same virtual freedom as any other user, and so allow disabled users to be able-bo...

To enable people with motor impairments to use gaze control to play online games and take part in virtual communities, new interaction techniques are needed that overcome the limitations of dwell clicking on icons in the games interface. We have investigated gaze gestures as a means of achieving this. We report the results of an experiment with 24...

Rhythm based music games such as Guitar Hero are hugely popular and allow gamers to take on the role of a famous musician. To play such games you must press keys on virtual guitars in various combinations in time with the music. Gamers with severe physical disabilities cannot always use traditional input devices so alternative methods of input are...

Attentive user interfaces (AUIs) capitalize on the rich information that can be obtained from users' gaze behavior in order to infer relevant aspects of their cognitive state. Not only is eye gaze an excellent clue to states of interest and intention, but also to preference and confidence in comprehension. AUIs are built with the aim of adapting th...

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft, have become the most widespread 3D graphical environments with millions of active subscribers worldwide. People with severe motor impairments should be able to take part in these games without the extent of their disability being apparent to others online. Eye gaze is a hig...

People with motor impairments can benefit greatly from being able to take part in Massively Multiplayer On-line Games, such as World of Warcraft. We are investigating how to use eye gaze as a high bandwidth input modality for the range of tasks necessary to participate in the game. We approach this from two directions; in the bottom-up approach we...

This paper proposes a simple approach to an old problem, that of the 'Midas Touch'. This uses modes to enable different types of mouse behavior to be emulated with gaze and by using gestures to switch between these modes. A light weight gesture is also used to switch gaze control off when it is not needed, thereby removing a major cause of the prob...

On-line real-time ‘immersive’ communities, such as SecondLife, are becoming increasingly popular as a means of interacting and doing things together with friends and new acquaintances. These communities represent users as avatars, through which a person may be represented by a virtual self of any shape, size, colour or other appearance, with intera...

Online virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft offer users the chance to participate in potentially limitless virtual worlds, all via a standard desktop pc, mouse and keyboard. This paper addresses some of the interaction barriers and privacy concerns that people with disabilities may encounter when using these worlds, and introduc...

Online virtual communities are becoming increasingly popular both within the able-bodied and disabled user communities. These games assume the use of keyboard and mouse as standard input devices, which in some cases is not appropriate for users with a disability. This paper explores gaze-based interaction methods and highlights the problems associa...

This paper introduces the work of the COGAIN “communication by gaze interaction” European Network of Excellence that is working toward giving people with profound disabilities the opportunity to communicate and control their environment by eye gaze control. It shows the need for developing eye gaze based communication systems, and illustrates the e...

Throughout the history of gaze tracking, there have been several dimensions along which the evolution of gaze-based communication can be viewed. Perhaps the most important of these dimensions is the ease of use, or usability, of systems incorporating eye tracking. Usable communication through eye-gaze has been a goal for many years and offers the p...

his paper describes the software implementation and the visualization aspects of an interaction-communication protocol within a large scalable multi-robot system. It investigates the current communication protocols within multi-agent systems and the feasibility to transfer them into a virtual environment system that performs a speci- fied task inte...

An experiment is reported that extends earlier work on the enhancement of eye pointing in 2D environments, through the addition of a zoom facility, to its use in virtual 3D environments using a similar enhancement. A comparison between hand pointing and eye pointing without any enhancement shows a performance advantage for hand based pointing. Howe...

This paper examines and compares the usability problems associated with eye-based and head-based assistive technology pointing devices when used for direct manipulation on a standard graphical user interface. It discusses and examines the pros and cons of eye-based pointing in comparison to the established assistive technology technique of head-bas...

This paper quantifies the benefits and usability problems associated with eye-based pointing direct interaction on a standard graphical user interface. It shows where and how, with the addition of a second supporting modality, the typically poor performance and subjective assessment of eye-based pointing devices can be improved to match the perform...

This paper quantifies the benefits and usability problems associated with eye-based pointing direct interaction on a standard graphical user interface. It shows where and how, with the addition of a second supporting modality, the typically poor performance and subjective assessment of eye-based pointing devices can be improved to match the perform...

This two-part report summarises an international workshop held at De Montfort University, which explored the usability evaluation of virtual environments (VEs). The workshop used chaired discussions between the 42 participants to examine current approaches to evaluation of VEs, the difficulties in utilising evaluation techniques designed for conve...

This two-part report summarises an international workshop held at De Montfort University, which explored the usability evaluation of virtual environments (VEs). The workshop examined current approaches to evaluation of VEs, the difficulties in utilising evaluation techniques designed for conventional desktop interfaces, and identified gaps in the...

Using a hand-controlled device to interact with objects displayed in 3-dimensional space can be difficult. The paper considers how eye-based interaction with 3D graphical environments offers a number of potential advantages as an input technique for both immersive and non-immersive virtual environments. Calculating the point of fixation in the view...

This paper discusses the design and initial evaluation of a visual on-screen keyboard, operated by eye-gaze, intended for use by motor-impaired users. The idea of an on-screen keyboard controlled by eye or by other modalities is not new. However, the keyboard presented here is different in two important respects. First, it enables interaction with...

Human computer interaction (HCI) is concerned with the design, implementation and evaluation of usable computer systems. The BCS HCI Curriculum Working Group is attempting to strengthen HCI education and training in the UK by establishing a broad HCI curriculum across the core components of university degrees and industrial training courses. The cu...

Within the British Computer Society, it is recognised that there are needs to improve and extend the HCI curriculum. The BCS is the body which validates computer science education in the UK. A working group of the BCS is investigating the requirements of academia and industry. This paper reports on initial research into what is being taught on HCI...

The paper describes the two software tools used by Leicester Polytechnic in the teaching of user interface design. They are Demo 2, a facading tool, and Domain Dialog, a user interface management system

Many surveys comparing users of visual display units with non-users have evaluated discomfort with a single questionnaire, designed to determine the occurrence of various symptoms. These in reality elicit the person's opinion or recollection of their discomfort rather than its actual frequency or severity. To examine the validity of this measure fo...

This paper reports the results of a two-year survey of the visual problems associated with the use of visual display units (VDUs). The survey examined both discomfort levels and visual function, and asked whether there were differences in these measures between subjects who used a VDU in the completion of their tasks and controls who did not. In to...

We have designed an on-screen keyboard, operated by eye-gaze, for use by motor-impaired users. It enables interaction with unmodified standard Graphic User Interface (GUI) software written for able-bodied users, and it is not solely designed around the need to enter text. The keyboard will adapt automatically to the application context by, for exam...

This paper examines and seeks to enhance gaze based pointing and interaction in virtual 3D environments. Interaction in 3D virtual environments can offer motor impaired users entertainment, rehabilitation training, collaborative activities with users in remote places, and the opportunity to experience a sense of place afforded by remote locations,...

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