Eye-tracking technology helps to enhance perception
Recent advances in gaze-tracking input – technology which tracks where your gaze falls on a computer screen – have rendered the technology much more affordable, opening a plethora of relevant applications. The EU-funded DEEPVIEW (Gaze-based perceptual augmentation) project built novel interactive displays that can exploit the new possibilities offered by gaze-tracking. It researched the perceptual benefits that could emerge from combining dynamically-changing images with eye trackers. To achieve its aims, the project team examined how gaze-contingent display and blur can be used to simulate accommodation. It developed processing software for images and data, building several versions of a full display system that provides depth of field through gazing. This enabled the team to articulate better subjective perception of depth to represent realistic images. DEEPVIEW also studied gaze-contingent contrast and colour, examining whether manipulating colour and brightness of peripheral areas of vision helps increase perceived colour differences. It found that manipulating peripheral colour or brightness dynamically can change the perception of the colour that an individual gazes at. This holds significant potential for developing high-dynamic range displays and extended colour gamut displays by adding eye-tracking capabilities, yet without changing the physical (optical) capabilities of the displays. Other project work focused on viewers’ ability to distinguish colours in novel ways, which could be useful for example in heat maps related to ocean temperature. Against this backdrop, the team successfully launched new open-source software called GAZER that enables users to experience gaze-contingent depth perception though blur. This is a novel way of perceiving 3D in pictures, the first ever application that combines light-field photography and eye-tracking.
Keywords
Eye-tracking, 3D viewing, gaze-tracking input, DEEPVIEW, perceptual augmentation
