Interfacing with a speller using EOG glasses

Abstract

Bio-signal based human computer interface (HCI) systems are a good alternative to standard touch based interfaces, offering subjects with motor impairments an alternative means of communication. This work investigates the use of electrooculography (EOG) to interface with a speller application. The use of a wireless EOG glasses currently on the market, known as JINS MEME, comprising only three dry electrodes, is compared to the standard two-pair EOG electrode configuration using wet electrodes. A blink accuracy of 97.63% and a saccade accuracy of 73.38% was obtained using a novel thresholding algorithm on the EOG data collected through the MEME glasses and the results were shown to be comparable to those obtained using wet surface electrodes. A real-time menu driven keyboard is also proposed and tested using the different eye movement recording techniques. In this case an average writing speed of 7.11 letters per minute, with a classification accuracy of 90.59% was obtained using signals recorded from the MEME glasses, showing that this new technology offers an ergonomic system that can easily be used in eye-based assistive applications.