Friday, August 23, 2002
Dasher: typing with your eyes
Posted by marlof in "SOFTWARE" @ 03:00 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2209829.stm
Brad already talked about the Dasher project in June, but now the BBC has a news story on it.
"Designed by David MacKay and David Ward in the University's Department of Physics, the system uses an eyetracker which can deduce where the user is looking on the screen. Letters continuously appear on the screen, with Dasher displaying the most likely pairings or triplets of letters. It can even guess whole words. [...] The system is faster than other eyetracking systems producing up to 25 words per minute compared to the 15 word per minute currently possible. "Not only is this faster than any alternative writing system driven by an eyetracker, the frequency of spelling mistakes is about five times smaller and the new system is also less stressful to use," added Dr MacKay. [...] It is hoped that the software will be useful for handheld computers or mobile phones where there is no space for a keyboard. It could also prove invaluable in the burgeoning markets in Japan and China. Both languages have thousands of characters meaning they are poorly suited to conventional keyboards."
A Pocket PC version of this open source program (of course you'd have to provide your own eyetracker) is available for download at the Dasher Project site. Source: PDA Gerbil and Craig Maxim.
Brad already talked about the Dasher project in June, but now the BBC has a news story on it.
"Designed by David MacKay and David Ward in the University's Department of Physics, the system uses an eyetracker which can deduce where the user is looking on the screen. Letters continuously appear on the screen, with Dasher displaying the most likely pairings or triplets of letters. It can even guess whole words. [...] The system is faster than other eyetracking systems producing up to 25 words per minute compared to the 15 word per minute currently possible. "Not only is this faster than any alternative writing system driven by an eyetracker, the frequency of spelling mistakes is about five times smaller and the new system is also less stressful to use," added Dr MacKay. [...] It is hoped that the software will be useful for handheld computers or mobile phones where there is no space for a keyboard. It could also prove invaluable in the burgeoning markets in Japan and China. Both languages have thousands of characters meaning they are poorly suited to conventional keyboards."
A Pocket PC version of this open source program (of course you'd have to provide your own eyetracker) is available for download at the Dasher Project site. Source: PDA Gerbil and Craig Maxim.
