Eye tracking in software environment : evaluating possibilities and limitations

“People often say that Eyes are the window to the soul and Pupils never lie.”

Keeping in mind the above phrase, let’s ponder upon the conception of Eye tracker. Eye tracker is the process of measuring eye movements to determine where, what and how long a person is looking at a particular spot. Eye Tracker is mostly used by researchers to study human behavior and attain a visual attention.

An Eye tracker uses near-infrared light and high definition cameras and projects light into the eye to record the direction of the cornea. Then advanced algorithms are used to calculate the position and focus of the eye. There are three types of eye tracker with which the visual behavior and position of the eye is studied within a fraction of seconds. They are: The Screen based, Webcam and the Wearable device.

Many software companies are unlocking the potential of the eye tracking technology to implement better interaction and establishing a communication between user and computer conveniently and in natural ways. Software companies are creating a way for new user experiences and innovating interfaces for regular consumer devices. These will emerge with more intuitive, engaging possibilities and will be more efficient than conventional user interfaces.

How eye tracking software is a rundown of capabilities?

The advancement in technologies is much more efficient in diagnosing user interface issues. Specialized eye tracking software is used to combine the information of the data and provide the user with details. The level of information we can attain of an eye tracking study will be analyzed by the type of tracker used, the program used to determine the data, and the nature of the experiment performed.

As time has passed, the technology and software has improved as well. This has gained the eye tracking field of today, in which insightful discoveries are more accessible than ever through the use of advanced eye tracking software. There are various features available for eye tracking, and some of these are offered for free. While this can be a great benefit for many companies, this advantage is dependent on the working of the software, if it works well as expected the price is negotiable.

Here’s the list of top most eye tracking software programs, showing their functions and accessibility accordingly.

• XLabs: It performs as a browser extension of Google. This startup is a product of R&D by the four co-founders. The software is installed directly to the browser and it works in multiple platforms. xLabs has also moved into spinoff, EyesDecide that provides evaluation of stimuli with the help of their webcam-based eye tracking. However, it is only limited to webcams and doesn’t allow integrated stimulus presentation and has no data analysis option. None the less, it is user friendly and simple.
• GazePointer: The GazePointer program is much easier to install, and runs only on Windows which makes it more widely accessible programs all throughout. This software is webcam based and doesn’t allow integrated stimulus presentation and has no data analysis option.
• MyEye: The notion of the MyEye software is to determine eye-tracking software to allow people with severe motor disabilities to stare which are taken as an input device for interacting with a computer. MyEye was thought of a concept to help people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the ones who have lost their voice and can only be able to move their eyes. MyEye is free eye-tracking software but doesn’t allow documentation and obtaining of data. It could be useful to work in combination with any eye-tracking based AAC software.
• Ogama: Ogama is OpenGazeAndMouseAnalyzer which is an open source software developed at the University of Berlin. It is software designed to evaluate eye and mouse movements in slideshow form. It is freeware and its main features include database based pre-processing and filtering of gaze and mouse data, the creation of maps, areas of interest definition, saliency calculation, distance calculation and replay recordings. Direct recording of the information is possible with commercial tracking systems and with the help of ITU Gaze tracker open source solution that uses infrared ready webcams. The software allows basic stimulus presentation and has basic data analysis option. The output can be provided directly and can be used with different statistical software packages.

• PyGaze: PyGaze is open source eye tracker software in Python which was published by three researchers in 2014. The software allows stimulus presentation but requires knowledge in python. The data analysis is also requires the proficiency in python. The main features include projects as PyGaze Analyser and a webcam eye-tracker. The software relies upon new cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology which is further useful for these fields, programming and random stuff.

• OpenGazer: OpenGazer was particularly designed 8 years ago to increase the convenient notion of computer use. The software was originally supported by Samsung and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. The software is potentially compatible with Apple which requires some sort of programming language. The software only works with webcams and requires the programming language Linux to perform efficiently.

• TurkerGaze: TurkerGaze is webcam-based eye tracking software used for collecting large-scale data with the help of crowd sourcing. This software was developed by researchers at Princeton. The system provides basic data analysis and mostly runs in Linux and is reliant on several Linux programs to function. The Crowd sourcing saliency makes at ease in data analyzing.

Eye tracking and its limitations

The primary issue of the free eye tracking softwares is that, they only incorporate data based on webcams. These makes it more accessible to the users but not always delivers the data accuracy and mostly is limited to various programming languages. The planning of implementing of software also comes down to trust. Working with eye tracking softwares is comprehensive as a whole range of features are readily available and allow us to carry out advanced research.

iMotions is the research platform that is designed for this purpose and sets up with the vast array of eye tracking features. While the price tag seems to be the attractive aspect, Accuracy and reliability are two necessary things when it comes to creating a deeper understanding of human behavior.

- Swagata Chongdar