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Abstract
EagleEyes is a new technology that allows a person to control the computer simply by moving his or her eyes or head. For the past year we have been working with over a dozen young people with severe disabilities to try out the system and to teach them how to use the system to control the computer. EagleEyes works by measuring the EOG, or electro-oculographic potential, through five surface electrodes placed on the head.
Introduction
We are interested in helping children who are multi-disabled and non-verbal from birth live as full and rich lives as possible. Modern computer and electronic technology holds the promise of extending the very limited physical capabilities of these children. But how ? The children with whom we work can move their eyes. As a person changes the angle of the eyes in the head a small electrical potential difference occurs that is proportional to the angle. If we place electrodes around the eyes we can sense the potential difference and hence sense the movement of the eyes in the head. We can use these signals to control the cursor on the screen. As the child learns to control the cursor on the computer screen we can use the computer to help the child communicate, to begin to assess the child's capabilities and knowledge, to help educate the child, to provide entertainment and enjoyment for the child and for the child's family.
EagleEyes
EagleEyes [1, 2] is a technology we have developed at Boston College with technical help from LTX Corp. and Apple Computer. EagleEyes is based on measuring a user's EOG or electro-oculographic potential. (For references to EOG and to other eye-control systems, see [2].) The EOG indicates the position of the eye relative to the head. Surface electrodes are placed on the user's head, above and below one eye and on each side of the head to the left and right of the eyes. These electrodes are connected to an electrophysiological amplifier which is connected to a signal acquisition and interface box which is connected to a computer. A program in the computer translates the signals received from the electrodes into the position of the cursor on the screen. Basically, the eyes replace the mouse. When the user moves his eyes or head, the cursor moves. By looking at a square on the screen the user can make a selection and cause, for example, a digitized video clip or sound to be played. The current system runs on a Macintosh and allows us to run both custom-developed software and most commercial software. Through EagleEyes users can run educational and entertainment software, spell out messages, and navigate through the internet just by moving their eyes.
We currently have four EagleEyes systems, three in our laboratories and one in the Boston College Campus School. The most recent version consists of two battery-powered boxes approximately 14 cm. x 8 cm. x 3 cm., one for the amplifiers and one for the digital logic.
The Campus School
The Campus School is a day-time educational facility for students, aged three to twenty-two, who have multiple impairments and are non-verbal. The Campus School is part of the School of Education of Boston College and is located on the main university campus. The EagleEyes facility at the Campus School is reserved for the Campus School students in the morning and for visitors and other students from schools in the greater Boston area in the afternoon.
The philosophy of the Campus School is "Each student is a unique individual, an inherent learner to be treated with dignity and respect." Our goal is to use EagleEyes to assist and augment the language receptive and expressive capacities of each student and to maximize each student's learning, abilities, and development.
Using EagleEyes
The first phase with each student is skill control. Learning to use the EagleEyes system is an acquired skill. A person without disabilities usually requires about 15 minutes to learn to become proficient enough with eye control to use the system to spell out her name using a keyboard displayed on the screen. For people with severe disabilities it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to many months to acquire eye control skill to run the system. First of all, the children need to understand that they are controlling the cursor on the screen by moving their eyes. Children who are so profoundly disabled from birth are not used to controlling anything physically, much less the cursor on the screen with their eyes. Once the children understand the cause and effect of moving the cursor with their eyes, we help them develop their eye control skills by having them run various commercial and custom-made software. For example, one program allows them to "paint" with their eyes. Wherever the child looks colored lines are drawn. At the end of the session we print out the eye painting on a color printer and give it to the parents to hang up on the refrigerator or to put in a frame on the wall. We also have developed a simple video game where the child shoots down aliens on the screen by looking at them and a program that allows a student to select digitized video clips to be played by looking at the opening frame of the desired clip.
The second phase is to use the system to advance the student's educational development. For younger students this would include letter recognition, word formation, and sentence construction. For older children, especially for those attending classes in the regular public schools, we use EagleEyes to help them with the full range of their studies. Here again, we use both commercially available and custom-designed software. One program we have developed allows a parent or teacher to enter any text (for example, lessons). The student then can have the computer speak that text under eye control. A second program allows a parent or teacher to enter in a series of questions and multiple choice answers that the child can select using eye control. This allows multiple choice exams to be taken by eye control so we can begin to assess what these students have learned. We also have developed multimedia programs for animal identification and arithmetic.
Of course, there are many programs that allow us to both develop eye control and provide education. Younger students especially enjoy running the programs in the popular Living Book series ("Just Grandma and Me", "Arthur's Teacher Trouble", "Little Monster at School") and the program "The Lion King" using EagleEyes.
Michael's Experience with EagleEyes
Michael is a 14 year old young man with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy who lives in a suburb of Boston. He cannot speak and can move only his eyes. His mother saw a TV piece on EagleEyes in September 1994 and called us up and asked if she could bring Michael in to try the system. At the time Michael was in a special school for children with disabilities. Each child with disabilities has an IEP or Individual Educational Plan. The goal stated in Michael's IEP at the time was to try to teach him to look up if he meant "yes" and down for "no". At the time we still were developing the initial system in our lab.
Michael came in and enjoyed using the system. His family asked if we would use Michael as a volunteer to help in our system development work. We agreed. We arranged for Michael to be examined by a neurologist at Mass. General Hospital, who confirmed his parents' statement that Michael has no voluntary muscle control, that there is no way for Michael reliably to move a mouse or joystick or even control a switch. (We wanted to be certain that using our experimental system was in Michael's best interest, that there was no simpler, more established technology suitable for Michael to use.) Michael came in to our laboratory once a week to use EagleEyes while we worked on the system and developed new software. Michael made good progress in skill control while we and our students learned how to design eye-controlled software. We set up a new system at the Campus School and Michael began coming in twice a week.
In one memorable session, we tried out a program that Mary Colt, a Boston College student working with us, had developed. The program asks the user to "Find the letter A" and presents four choices, one in each corner of the screen. The user holds his glance (and the cursor) at his choice. The computer senses the answer and then says either "Yes. That is correct." or "No. Please try again." Michael correctly found the first letter so we tried the entire alphabet. It took him just 30 tries to find all 26 letters (26 correct, 4 errors -- most likely due to skill problems with EagleEyes rather than lack of knowing the letters). He really did know the alphabet. Did he know the colors ? Jason McHugh, another undergraduate student working with us, developed a program that presents a screen with six shapes: a yellow triangle, a red circle, etc. The computer asks the user to find the purple shape. Michael looked at the purple shape and the computer acknowledged it. The computer asks him to find the blue shape. He did. The computer asks him to find the red shape. Michael began staring at Erik, a student working on the project at the Campus School. "No. Find the red shape." Michael stares at Erik's head and starts laughing. "Find the red shape." Michael stares at Erik and laughs harder, a huge belly laugh. Then it dawns. Erik has bright red hair. Michael found the red shape. He is way ahead of us. Who is testing whom, here?
One of the many pleasures of working with Michael has been seeing him become more at ease engaging in social interactions. Another has been discovering his quirky sense of humor.
Michael made such good progress that in September he left the special school and joined the sixth grade in the public school in his town. Michael continues to come to the Campus School to use EagleEyes twice a week. He now is identifying adverbs and adjectives in text by moving his eyes to point to them. His family has purchased a computer and we are trying to arrange for them to have their own EagleEyes system to use with it.
"It's like being witness to a miracle. Things we've been telling him for the past 13 years all sank in. It's all there -- and now we have a way of getting it out," his teacher told a writer for Michael's hometown newspaper. "We were at Kitty Hawk and now we're probably at World War II fighter planes. We want to go to the moon with the kid." [3]
"I see him graduating from college," Michael's mother told the writer. [3]
Michael's family presented us with a plaque that says "Thank you for unlocking the magic of Michael's mind."
Where We Are
We do have over a dozen other people who regularly use the system now, ranging in age from 3 to 30. We are about to install a second unit in the Campus School.
As word has spread about the system we also have been visited by some adults who have tried out the system. For example, a 55 year old former business executive who is completely paralyzed by a stroke was intrigued to be able to use EagleEyes to control Netscape so he could navigate to sites of interest (CNN, Sports Illustrated) simply by moving his eyes.
Response from the students who have been using the system -- and their teachers and parents -- is very encouraging.
We are working to make more EagleEyes units available and to improve the system so it will be as useful as possible.
References
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