Blue Eyes Technology

What is it?

Blue eyes technology is an IBM venture to allow people to interact with computer in more natural way as they usually interact with each other.

The technology aims to enable devices to recognize and use natural input, such as facial expressions. The basic idea behind blue eyes technology is to give the computer the human power. We all have some perceptual abilities. That is we can understand each others feelings. For example we can understand ones emotional state by analyzing his facial expression. If we add these perceptual abilities of human to computers would enable computers to work together with human beings as intimate partners. The "BLUE EYES" technology aims at creating computational machines that have perceptual and sensory ability like those of human beings.

How this is possible? 

We make the computer to see and feel with the help of certain devices.

The devices initially used were a small mouse and other input devices like a microphone or a video camera. This devices are used to recognize facial expressions, voice, movement of the persons eyes, impulses etc.

BlueEyes uses sensing technology to identify a user's actions and to extract key information. This information is then analyzed to determine the user's physical, emotional, or informational state, which in turn can be used to help make the user more productive by performing expected actions or by providing expected information. For example, a Blue Eyes-enabled television could become active when the user makes eye contact, at which point the user could then tell the television to "turn on".

Applications of Blue eyes technology:

1.Engineers at IBM's ffice:smarttags" Research Center in San Jose, CA, report that a number of large retailers have implemented surveillance systems that record and interpret customer movements, using software from Almaden's BlueEyes research project. BlueEyes is developing ways for computers to anticipate users' wants by gathering video data on eye movement and facial expression. Your gaze might rest on a Web site heading, for example, and that would prompt your computer to find similar links and to call them up in a new window. But the first practical use for the research turns out to be snooping on shoppers.

BlueEyes software makes sense of what the cameras see to answer key questions for retailers, including, How many shoppers ignored a promotion? How many stopped? How long did they stay? Did their faces register boredom or delight? How many reached for the item and put it in their shopping carts? BlueEyes works by tracking pupil, eyebrow and mouth movement. When monitoring pupils, the system uses a camera and two infrared light sources placed inside the product display. One light source is aligned with the camera's focus; the other is slightly off axis. When the eye looks into the camera-aligned light, the pupil appears bright to the sensor, and the software registers the customer's attention.this is way it captures the person's income and buying preferences. BlueEyes is actively been incorporated in some of the leading retail outlets.

2. Another application would be in the automobile industry. By simply touching a computer input device such as a mouse, the computer system is designed to be able to determine a person's emotional state. for cars, it could be useful to help with critical decisions like:

"I know you want to get into the fast lane, but I'm afraid I can't do that.Your too upset right now" and therefore assist in driving safely.

3. Current interfaces between computers and humans can present information vividly, but have no sense of whether that information is ever viewed or understood. In contrast, new real-time computer vision techniques for perceiving people allows us to create "Face-responsive Displays" and "Perceptive Environments", which can sense and respond to users that are viewing them. Using stereo-vision techniques, we are able to detect, track, and identify users robustly and in real time. This information can make spoken language interface more robust, by selecting the acoustic information from a visually-localized source. Environments can become aware of how many people are present, what activity is occuring, and therefore what display or messaging modalities are most appropriate to use in the current situation. The results of our research will allow the interface between computers and human users to become more natural and intuitive.

4. We could see its use in video games where, it could give individual challenges to customers playing video games.Typically targeting commercial business.

The integration of children's toys, technologies and computers is enabling new play experiences that were not commercially feasible until recently. The Intel Play QX3 Computer Microscope, the Me2Cam with Fun Fair, and the Computer Sound Morpher are commercially available smart toy products developed by the Intel Smart Toy Lab in . One theme that is common across these PC-connected toys is that users interact with them using a combination of visual, audible and tactile input & output modalities. The presentation will provide an overview of the interaction design of these products and pose some unique challenges faced by designers and engineers of such experiences targeted at novice computer users, namely young children.

5. The familiar and useful come from things we recognize. Many of our favorite things' appearance communicate their use; they show the change in their value though patina. As technologists we are now poised to imagine a world where computing objects communicate with us in-situ; where we are. We use our looks, feelings, and actions to give the computer the experience it needs to work with us. Keyboards and mice will not continue to dominate computer user interfaces. Keyboard input will be replaced in large measure by systems that know what we want and require less explicit communication. Sensors are gaining fidelity and ubiquity to record presence and actions; sensors will notice when we enter a space, sit down, lie down, pump iron, etc. Pervasive infrastructure is recording it. This talk will cover projects from the Context Aware Computing Group at MIT Media Lab.

BLUE EYE System Overview :

“BLUE EYES” system provides technical means for monitoring and recording the operator’s basic physiological parameters. The most important parameter is saccadic activity1, which enables the system to monitor the status of the operator’s visual attention along with head acceleration, which accompanies large displacement of the visual axis (saccades larger than 15 degrees). Complex industrial environment can create a danger of exposing the operator to toxic substances, which can affect his cardiac, circulatory and pulmonary systems. Thus, on the grounds of lethysmographic signal taken from the forehead skin surface, the system computes heart beat rate and blood oxygenation. The BLUE EYES system checks above parameters against abnormal (e.g. a low level of blood oxygenation or a high pulse rate) or undesirable (e.g. a longer period of lowered visual attention) values and triggers user-defined alarms when necessary. Quite often in an emergency situation operators speak to themselves expressing their surprise or stating verbally the problem. Therefore, the operator’s voice, physiological parameters and an overall view of the operating room are recorded. This helps to reconstruct the course of operators’ work and provides data for long-term analysis. This system consists of a mobile measuring device and a central analytical system. The mobile device is integrated with Bluetooth module providing wireless interface between sensors worn by the operator and the central unit. ID cards assigned to each of the operators and adequate user profiles on the central unit side provide necessary data personalization so different people can use a single mobile device.