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Eye-Tracker App Controls Games, Wheelchairs

A smarter way to control computers is demonstrated in a free app showing how eye movement can be harnessed to control video games. National Instruments, its inventor, is currently adapting the technique to emerging applications such as hands-free control of wheelchairs as well as to potentially providing a "fun" therapeutic treatment for amblyopia (lazy eye).

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Eye-Tracker App Controls Games, Wheelchairs
What began as a skunk-works project of the Waterloo Labs team of engineers at National Instruments (Austin, Texas) has evolved into a free downloadable application for the company's visual programming development environment called LabView. The app, called EyeMario, harnesses electro-oculography to track the eye movement of users in order to control a Nintendo console running its popular Mario video game.

The EyeMario app allows users to control Nintendo's Mario video game with eye movement detected by electrodes (inset).

Since the source code is being made freely available, it can be modified by anyone to use eye movements to control any application. Medical applications already in the works at National Instruments include a game for children suffering from amblyopia (lazy eye), which enables them to perform their prescribed eye exercises while playing a fun game. And a parallel development effort is adapting the source code to allow eye-movement control of wheelchairs for patients who have lost the use of their hands.

"We created EyeMario as a next-generation video gaming interface," said Waterloo Labs team member and Analog Hardware Engineer Chris Culver. "But we are now in the early stages of exploring other applications in medical and other areas that can use this technique."

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