“Senior computer and information science major Anna Cavender sits at a computer in a small room, her hands wrapped around her waist, her posture straight but relaxed. She waits while the machine calibrates and begins drawing a house on the screen, adding a chimney, a window and trees.
But Cavender’s hands never leave her hips; she draws the house using only her eyes.
Cavender was demonstrating new software dubbed EyeDraw that she and recent University graduate Rob Hoselton recently developed. The software is designed to allow children with severe motor impairments to draw smoothly using eye trackers. A sensor is mounted beneath the computer monitor to detect eye movements and analyze them, thus creating hands-free control.
As a result of her work on the EyeDraw project, the Computing Research Association named Cavender as North America’s 2004 Outstanding Female Undergraduate in Computer Science and Engineering. CRA is an association of more than 200 computer science and engineering academic departments, laboratories, centers in industry, government and academia that are engaged in basic computing research, according to http://www.cra.org.
Cavender will receive a $1,000 cash prize at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, which will be held this October in Chicago…
Although real-time eye tracking has been linked to controlling computers before, Cavender said this is the first time eye trackers have been able to draw without scribbles, which have been the result of the eye’s natural movement….
During previous attempts to draw with the eye, Hoselton said drawing occurred wherever the user looked on the screen, which posed a technical problem referred to as the ‘Midas touch problem.’”
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