Magilock: a reliable control triggering method in multi-channel eye-control systems.

Eye-tracking technology brings a different human-computer interaction experience to users because of its intuitive, natural, and hands-free operation characteristics. Avoiding the Midas touch problem and improving the accuracy of interaction are among the main goals of the research and development of eye-control systems. This study reviews the methods and limitations of research on avoiding the Midas touch problem. For typical control clicking operations with low fault tolerance, such as mode switching and state selection in an eye-control system, this study proposes Magilock, a more reliable control triggering method with a high success rate in multi-channel eye-control systems. Magilock adds a control pre-locked mechanism between the two interactive steps of eye-control channel positioning control and other interactive channel triggering controls in the multi-channel eye-control system. This effectively avoids incorrect control triggering caused by multi-channel coordination disorder and gaze-point drift. This study also conducted ergonomic experiments to explore the lock and unlock times of the control pre-locked mechanism in Magilock. Taking into account the experimental data and subjective evaluation of the participants, we recommend setting the lock time and the unlock time of Magilock to 200 ms.

The Influence of Target Layout and Clicking Method on Picking Time and Dragging Performance Based on Eye-Control Technique.

Eye-tracking has been a hot topic in human-computer interaction (HCI). Nevertheless, previous studies usually adopted eye-tracking as information output rather than input. The eye-control technique can achieve convenient and rapid real-time operation through the movement of the eyes and reduce unnecessary manual operations. Because the layout determines the location orientation, organizational complexity, cognitive consistency, and predictive ability of the information display, the interface layout design affects the user's perception of information intensity, complexity, and logic. Moreover, the method of target clicking by eye-control techniques, which include blink and dwell, also depends on the application and user's ability. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of target layout and target picking method on picking time and dragging performance based on eye-control technique. The results indicate that the target picking method, i.e., blink or dwell, had significant effects on the dragging time and dragging numbers. However, there was no significant effect of target layout on picking time and dragging performance (dragging time and numbers), which may be related to the setting of the experimental conditions (e.g., lighting level and screen resolution). Moreover, the target picking method and the target layout had no significant interaction effect on picking time and dragging performance. The findings are anticipated to provide helpful implications for future eye control technique design.