Q & A with Dr. Andrew Duchowski, Clemson University
cost thousands of dollars, now with open source solutions for eye trackers, head mounted glasses, and Virtual Reality Head- sets (VR) these are much more affordable, some even $600. However the most recent trend that I’ve noticed is the disap- pearance of some open source companies because they are being bought out by larger companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook. In terms of research, eye tracking has expanded in the areas such as cognitive load and vigilance, a term used for mental workload or tasks. An example of research for cognitive load would be measuring the pupil diameter of surgeons as they perform. An example of vigilance would be driving. My journey with eye tracking has only been seven years compared to your 20, and in my mind I see the future of eye-tracking research resulting in placing eye trackers in classrooms across America whether it be for standardized testing or to use in daily education tasks. I see eye trackers there. Where do you think the future of eye tracking is headed? I attended a seminar in Dagstuhl, Germany, it’s kind of a think tank for academic research and the term we used there is ubiquitous gaze sensing (https://www.dagstuhl.de/de/ programm/kalender/semhp/?semnr=18252). It’s the “internet of seeing things”. The idea that a time will come when eye- tracking technology will be everywhere in every computer, appliance and toaster. Think about about a TV/DVR that auto- matically pauses when you look away from it. So even with your toaster, it’s the idea that a person’s gaze can provide to the operating system a sort of context and then the operating system can respond to it. That is where eye tracking is headed.
How long have you been doing eye tracking research?
20 years, I started in 1998 when I started Clemson’s eye tracking lab: eyeCU.
What courses do you teach in eye tracking?
I teach Eye Tracking Methodology for graduate and under- graduate students. This semester I am teaching Gaze Sensing and Interaction. We have a classroom with 20 eye trackers from Gazepoint (https://www.gazept.com). We are one of four Universities in the world with an eye tracking classroom, one in Slovakia which you mentioned, Sweden, South Africa and ours in Clemson, SC.
What’s next for you?
We have a premier state of the art eye tracking research conference (ETRA http://etra.acm.org/2019 ) in the US this year. It will be held this summer, June 25-28, 2019, in Denver, Colorado. Eye tracking companies bring their latest tech- nology to exhibit and the most current eye gaze research is presented. This summer I am teaching a week long Clemson Summer Scholars course for rising 10th-12th graders. The course is entitled: Human-Computer Interaction Through Eye Tracking. Students will be get to conduct hands-on eye tracking experi- ments. Enrollment starts December 1, 2018. https://www. clemson.edu/summer/summer-scholars/eye-tracking.htm
What are some current trends with eye tracking?
In recent years there have been open source solutions to high tech eye tracking. Where an eye tracker 20 years ago
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