eyeBlog

cottonbuds writes "Researchers at Human Media Lab, Queen's University in Canada presented the ECSGlasses: eye contact sensing glasses that report when people look at their wearer. When eye contact is detected, the glasses stream this information to appliances to inform these about the wearer's engagement. According to HML.Blog the ECSGlasses uses a wearable, wireless Eye-Contact Sensor (1.3MB .jpg) to gauge when the user receives eye-contact from an onlooker. eyeBlog uses this information to record and publish face-2-face conversations without dividing the user's attention between the event being recorded, and the device being used to record it. Moreover, because eyeBlog uses eye-contact to start and stop recording, users do not need to sift through hours of footage to find interesting segments. If you are the academic type you can read the paper (2.2MB .pdf), otherwise the video in .mpg (1:49min, 320x240, 7.5MB), or mp4 (1:49min, 320x240, 4.9MB) should explain everything. Video Mirror: .mp4 .mpg."

Are You lookin at ME?

[teh Wang (777509)]

no? oh ok then.

Re:Are You lookin at ME?

[g0tai (625459)]

No! I wasnt looking at you! I was looking at your funky decorative resistors! soooo sexy! :-p

why bother

[CaptnMArk (9003)]

I am often able to sense eye contact without any sensors at all. Anyone else?

Re:why bother

[Johnathon_Dough (719310)]

I am often able to sense eye contact without any sensors at all.

Yeah me too.

However...
What I can't do is record a long series of video and remember the time stamp of when eye contact was made.
Oh, I also can't make an appliance turn on or perform a specific task by looking at it.

But yeah, I can tell if someone is looking at me.

Re:why bother

[Glonoinha (587375)]

They need to release a female version that is triggered whenever someone is staring at their chest.

Re:why bother

[Lord_Dweomer (648696)]

But why limit it to females. I'd want a version to sense when some girl was staring at my ass or package. Reminds me of that episode of Weird Science where they have Lisa make them a handheld tv player that lets them see through the eyes of any woman they want. At the end they notice her checking out their asses.

Re:why bother

[Lord Prox (521892)]

What I would like to see is the MPEG of the look of pure horror in his eyes when he sees what we are doing to his web server. linking right to >1MB files.

Oh the humanity!

Eye-Contact Sensor (1.3MB .jpg) [freecache.org]
PDF [freecache.org]
mpeg1 [freecache.org]
mpeg2 [freecache.org]

Re:why bother

[British (51765)]

I love that pic of the eye syensor glasses. In the early 1980s(and the blondie video "rapture"), I had a pair of sunglasses with blinking LEDs in the lenses. This must be the high tech revival.

Re:why bother

[Rhubarb Crumble (581156)]

I am often able to sense eye contact without any sensors at all. Anyone else?

Animal instinct, I think. Spot the tiger that's just spotted you.

IIRC research has shown that if a predator is eyeing up a herd of prey (e.g. cheetah lounging near grazing antelopes), typically one of the herd will start getting skittish while the others graze on obliviously, and sure enough the nervous one is the one that gets eaten.

Of course, this instinct weakens if people are used to getting stared at, which is why it's a

Similar items...

[ArbiterOne (715233)]

... can be found in this month's issue of WIRED [wired.com] magazine. There was quite an interesting blogging device that looked like a can. It had a video recorder, audio recorder, and a fold-out screen.
Can we expect this device to be on the market anytime soon?

Re:Similar items...

[moz25 (262020)]

Funny... the first item I saw when I clicked your WIRED link was "Getting Naked for Big Brother".

Coincidental or not... any technology will eventually be (attempted to be) used for something that involves people being naked :-)

Ugly

[Vladimir9 (635161)]

Im pretty sure if your wearing those glasses everyone will be looking at you...pointing and laughing.

Not the greatest example

[Pilferer (311795)]

from the article on HP's site [hp.com]:

Your daughter's first smile. Your son's joy the first time he catches a ball. The wink your favorite uncle always gave you, but that he'd never do on camera.

Uhhhh, WHAT?

Re:Not the greatest example

[slycer9 (264565)]

The look of horror on your favourite uncle's face as he's dragged away by the police.

The deposition.

The trial.

The years of therapy you go through to get over your favourite uncle.

The list just goes on and on!

almost what i want

[rootedgimp (523254)]

i was all thinking "yay neat inconspicuous social paranoia spy stuff" before i clicked the 1.3mb photo button.



i was wrong in that assumption, btw.

Re:almost what i want

[TheLoneCabbage (323135)]

it's a clever idea, not a terribly advanced peice of technology. You could probably do the same thing with much fewer, and smaller components.

It could be made much more inconspicuous.

Good, but..

[jayminer (692836)]

Very interesting behavior, but social and ethical rules may not be tolerable to such device.

Re:Good, but..

[Jondor (55589)]

Maybe, but imho it's one of the many small steps which will lead to robots who can behave in a human society.
As for tolerating, people seem to tolerate almost everything these days. Just use the magic "terrorism" word..

Better Use

[TheLoneCabbage (323135)]

This could be very handy for computer control. For instance your computer might only accept voice commands from you while you are looking straight at it (as opposed to saying something stupid to your friend like "What is the FORM MATerial of the SEA DRIVE?")

And depending on how large the return IR area is, it could also be used to determin where someone is looking at on the screen (with say 3 or 4 IR sensors to triagulate position based on return signal strength).

Then again, the down side is now we geeks NEED to make eyecontact.

Re:Better Use

[medication (91890)]

If you poke around the images on the site you'll see that they have already implemented what you're speaking about. TV [queensu.ca], and phones [queensu.ca] being devices that they have shown being controlled by attention/visual focus.

Re:Better Use

[idfrsr (560314)]

Dare I provide another link to send my deparment's server to oblivion, if you search the HML website you find several papers published on that very topic.

Re:Better Use

[FrenZon (65408)]

And depending on how large the return IR area is, it could also be used to determin where someone is looking at on the screen

That is pretty close to how many current eye-tracking systems work.

example1 [www.mpi.nl]
example2 [arringtonresearch.com]
example3 [eyelinkinfo.com] (bulky)

Like...

[ArbiterOne (715233)]

Could we be seeing something similar soon to the eye-scanning of Minority Report? This could definitely be used as an ID-device.
Or what about the advertising potential? If someone looks at a particular type of ad repeatedly, that builds a profile of the person's interests.

Public speaking?

[ValourX (677178)]

And just what the hell will happen if you're giving a speech or performance for 10k people? All looking at you at once as your contacts get Slashdotted and fry to a crisp...

No thanks -- I'll keep my old fashioned contacts.

-Jem

Eye contact?

[Gary Destruction (683101)]

How does it determine eye contact? Someone could appear to be looking at you. But in reality, you could easily be in their line of sight. It doesn't necessarily mean they're looking at you, let alone making eye contact.

Re:Eye contact?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm ... what's next: eye-contact fooling glasses

Staring won't be a problem anymore

[Gary Destruction (683101)]

If someone is staring at you, the glasses take a picture for them so it lasts longer.

Focus-follows-sight

[domQ (760908)]

Can't wait for these googles to be plugged into my window manager!

Who wants to look at eyes?

[by Anonymous Coward]

How about taking a photo every time you're transfixed on an amazing chest or bottom? That's a blog a lot more people would appreciate :)

Re:Who wants to look at eyes?

[Greg W. (15623)]

My first thought when reading this story was similar, but reversed. Rather than being notified whenever someone looks at my eyes, I think it might be useful to be informed when someone looks at my ass.

Second version in development

[tilrman (234948)]

Researchers found that the eyeBlog was only 28% effective when used by female wearers, but couldn't reproduce the effect in the lab. After some field trials, however, they discovered and corrected the problem. The new eyeBlog-II for women is 96% accurate and will be completed sometime next month. Rather than attaching the sensors to eyeglasses, the eyeBlog-II will be embedded into a bra.

Re:Second version in development

[fraccy (780466)]

hehehe... funny as that is, I think you're onto a winner. People want to know when they're being watched by someone /not/ in their field of view. Imagine the marketing potential of a device attached to the buttocks, alerting female wearers of an er.. admiring onlooker. This would probably result in some kind of armageddon (and a lot of slapped faces), along with the subsequent development of ButtBlog jamming devices...

why?!

[fraccy (780466)]

This reminds me of that device (I forget who developed it) which looked like a cycle helmet and had the ability to recognise objects. As with so much technology, I get concerned as to what we're actually trying to achieve here... I'm having a forgetful day, but who was it said man is just trying to make a machine in his own image? Seems increasingly valid...Show me a machine that shocks the wearer every time they perform a ridiculously stupid act, now that would be a step forward.

Privacy concerns

[rteunissen (740645)]

Here in Holland you can't just take someone's picture and publish it. This toy seems to just that. Maybe i don't want my face on the internet at all.

I wonder what the latency is?

[Karora (214807)]

I wonder what the latency is between when someone hears something interesting, and when they look up at the person who is speaking.

It seems to me that this sort of thing (great as the idea is) should be recording full-time, and then discarding anything that hasn't prompted the wearer's interest with "N" seconds.

There are probably also ways to detect the wearer's interest outside of trying to figure if they are looking at a person. Eyeball behaviour. Head behaviour. Mental activity. Probably the sorts of cluster of patterns that some sort or neural net would do well with once it was trained to recognise them.

It's all a great idea though, and naturally enough one that has seen more mature versions appearing in SF books for decades. Good to see reality moving in this direction too.

is it just me?

[martin-boundary (547041)]

Or did anyone else feel creeped out by those shiny eyes? I had no idea there were so many Goa'uld walking around? Brr, I may have to wear my trusty Joo Janta 200 super-Chromatic contact lenses undertneath.

Mirror mirror

[by Anonymous Coward]

Mmm. Does the system provide flood protection in a magic house of mirrors ? Hate to see ones brain explode due to a infinite recursion failure in his or hers glasses.

Great for people with handicap

[softwave (145750)]

Actually, I think this is great for people who suffer a physical handicap (eg. paralysed).
Nowadays there are similar systems. A paralysed friend of mine uses a small LED beamer attached to his glasses to use the computer. By moving his head, he moves the red dot on the screen which functions as the cursor. A sensor of some kind interpretes the signal and moves the cursor.
Pretty expensive piece of equipment, though.
Well, instead they could use some of those sensors to track eye movement and position in relation to the computer screen.
Being given the proper use, I think these gizmo's will eventualy find their way on the right market.

One step closer to HAL

[psoriac (81188)]

Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

Neat!

[carvalhao (774969)]

I find that this technology actually makes a lot of sense in a business environment, specially if coupled with some sort of retina light beam scanning [ieee.org] technology. I can envision a meeting where businessmen, while negotiating, could access relevant information about the person they were talking to on the fly, including important corporate information.

There are, however, two major showstoppers. One is the matter of privacy. I may not be interested that everyone I gaze at gets an instant picture of me without my authorization, specially because I'm not all that pretty ;). Second, in societies and cultures where eye contact is just not important or is considered as intrusive an menacing, such as in Japan, the system would just not be functional

But still... great for nerds who can't really tell if a woman is giving them the eye... perhaps with a computer telling them so they'll be more confident ;)

"wearable, wireless Eye-Contact Sensor"

[CdBee (742846)]

My first thought on seeing that image was
"I am Lokutas of Borg: Resistance is futile!"

The problem is...

[Snaller (147050)]

...when you wear that thing, everbody looks at you!

I heard...

[m00nun1t (588082)]

I heard they made another version of the software that would distinguish the sex of the person and alert the wearer when a female looked at them, useful in "social" situations. However, fields tests were unsuccessful as not a single female looked at the test subject during a 4 hour party.

Engagement

[ozbird (127571)]

When eye contact is detected, the glasses stream this information to appliances to inform these about the wearer's engagement.

I read this as "the contact's engagement."

Scanning...
Married
Bodybuilder boyfriend
Engaged
Single - WE HAVE A WINNER!

Go back to AIM

[Robawesome (660673)]

eyeBlog uses this information to record and publish

face-2-face conversations...(emphasis added)

Get it through your heads, people: Numerals are not syllables and connot be substituted for them. "2" is NOT the same thing as "to". "1" cannot be substituted for the "one" in "someone". "4" is NOT the same thing as "for".

If you are going to use these kinds of sloppy, illegible, ugly, non-standard substitutions, just go whole hog. No point in half measures. Example:

eyeBlog uss ths in4m8ion 2 rec0rd n puhblihs face-2-face convers8ions w/o dvdng teh usrs attntion be2ween teh event bng rec0rded, n teh devIce bng usd 2 rec0rd it.

Is that what you want? To sound like an illiterate 14 year old girl on AIM? Then understand it now: Numerals and syllables are not interchangable. When you act like they are, you cheapen the quality of life of everyone who accidentally reads your fetid heap of alphanumeric garbage.

old news?

[vivIsel (450550)]

The Context Aware Computing group at the MIT Media Lab produced Eye aRe [mit.edu] years ago. These devices detect attention paid to another such unit (yes, everyone needs to be equipped with one, which is a difference from the canadian item), and not just staring in the general direction: There is a demo, for instance, wherein the wearer can look at a computer, which prompts it to unpause movie playback. Looking away--without turning of the head, eyes only--repauses the movie (this is insanely hard to demo without sound; you can't really tell if it has paused or not when you're looking away, so you look back at it. oops.). The Eye-Are units are certainly smaller, at the very least. To be fair, they're using different technologies, but the optical advanced-ness of the canadian unit seems wasted on a supid application. The usefulness of having inanimate objects--say, appliances--know where you're looking, when, and how (the Eye aRe detects blinking, an increase of which can signal any number of things) seems to dwarf that of some hyper-blogging solution. Both devices, of course, offer a sort of unconscious appliance-control possiblilties, but one is much smaller, and cheaper to manufacture (namely, the Eye aRe).

Cat exclusion software? Other uses?

[argent (18001)]

Does it have software to filter out small mammals with the uncanny ability to stare down a mirror? Have they tried it the presence of cats?

My first thought, by the way, was for it to detect when people were averting their gaze. "He's lying", the eyePhone whispered into my ear, "he's only making eye contact for 20% of his statements".

Have it measure pupil dilation and a few other things and you'll have a heck of a Date Meter. Things were looking up, until my eyePhone's warning buzzer went off. "Pupil dilation reduces 5% every time he makes eye contact, and increases 30% when he looks over your left shoulder." I glanced back to see who my competition was...

Eye contact

[bromoseltzer (23292)]

The other half of this project is eyeglasses that make eye contact with other people in the room. So we can go through life staring at the floor in social situations...

Evasive, shifty-eyes not recorded

[Ra5pu7in (603513)]

I find that a lot of people do not maintain eye contact during a conversation - particularly in a situation with many people around. First of all, there are those who will make eye contact as they say hello, but from then on their eyes are scanning the crowd for people they haven't greeted. Secondly, those who are shy or uncomfortable tend to meet eyes rarely and look down more than at the person they are speaking to. Finally, some people just don't seem to be able to hold eye contact -- it is threatening, or some such thing -- and might glance once or twice in your direction while talking. Seems like an awful lot of conversations to lose. (OTOH, great-aunt Josephine is fully willing to maintain eye contact - and physical contact - while she tells you all about her physical ailments. Ack!)

Sociobiologically inconsistent

[NoData (9132)]

The thing is, men make eye contact to initiate a conversation, but usually do NOT maintain eye contact throughout the conversation. It's a well known ethological fact that men look away often during conversations, sometime conducting entire face to face conversations without almost no eye contact. It's a primal aggression thing: looking away signals submission, trust, or goodwill, while holding gaze is a challenge. The same does not generally hold true for women, or men talking to women. Eye contact is held much more consistently.

Notice next time you're talking to a male colleague. Feel the discomfort if you try to prolong eye contact. Then compare when talking to a woman.

Oh, wait. This is Slashdot....