Video: A new interface makes it possible to explore, and slay monsters, in the 3D game World of Warcraft using your eyes alone

Technology is being developed to allow people with severe motor disabilities to play 3D computer games like World of Warcraft using only their eyes.

Since the 1990s, gaze technology has helped people with conditions such as motor neurone disease (MND), cerebral palsy and other “” to control 2D desktop environments and communicate using visual keyboards.

Users typically guide a cursor with their eyes, staring at objects for a time to emulate a mouse click. But that is too laborious to let users to match the speed and accuracy of real-time 3D games, says lead researcher on the project, , of De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

His team is developing the software as part of the EU-funded project (COGAIN).

Gaze gaming

“Even though a user in, say, Second Life might look as if they are able-bodied, if they can’t operate and communicate as fast as everyone else, they could be perceived as having a disability,” he told New Scientist, adding that there is a privacy issue for players who may prefer not to reveal their disability in the virtual world.

In virtual worlds, gamers need to perform a whole suite of commands including moving their character or avatar, altering their viewpoint on the scene, manipulating objects and communicating with other players.

Eye-gaze systems bounce infrared light from LEDs at the bottom of a computer monitor and track a person’s eye movements using stereo infrared cameras. This setup can calculate where on a screen the user is looking with an accuracy of about 5 mm.

Vickers’ software includes the traditional point and click interface, but includes extra functions to speed up certain commands.

Power moves

Glancing momentarily off-screen in a particular direction switches between different functions, for example, to a mode that rotates the avatar or viewpoint, or to call up transparent icons dragged onto game objects to perform a particular action.

A “gaze gesture” is also built in to temporarily turn off the eye-gaze functions altogether, to avoid unintentionally selecting an item while looking around the screen.

“The eyes are perceptual organs, not designed for pointing and selecting,” explains Vickers. “You can’t turn them off, like you can lift your hand off the mouse.”

Confidence boost

The developments are “hugely important”, according to Mick Donegan, who works with severely disabled children and adults at Oxford-based charity and COGAIN partner, .

“Enabling someone to express themselves and engage with people in ways that they can’t do in real life – because they are restricted to a wheelchair or a bed – can have a really positive effect on their self-esteem and motivation,” says Donegan.

Vickers hopes to begin trials of the software with people with locked-in syndrome within the next year.

was presented at the in Savannah, US.

A village in south-west England will shortly be swarming with robots competing to show off their surveillance skills.

The event is the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) answer to the US DARPA Grand Challenge that set robotic cars against one another to encourage advances in autonomous vehicles.

The MoD Grand Challenge is instead designed to boost development of teams of small robots able to scout out hidden dangers in hostile urban areas.

Over 10 days in August, 11 teams of robots will compete to locate and identify four different threats hidden around a mock East German village used for urban warfare training, at Copehill Down, Wiltshire (see image, top right).

The robots must find snipers, armed vehicles, armed foot soldiers, and improvised explosive devices hidden around the village, and relay a real-time picture of what is happening back to a command post.

Urban hazards

The robots will need to negotiate the complexity of an urban environment to find the threats. Hazards include unfamiliar terrain and buildings, trees, near-invisible overhead wires and other urban clutter.

Teams will earn points based on how many threats they locate in one hour, and how autonomous they are. For example, a team will lose points if they use remote control to direct their vehicles at any stage of the trial.

The teams that score highest will be rewarded with the potential of a lucrative contract with the MoD, which hopes to see the best ideas rapidly developed to the point they can be deployed by UK forces in places such as Afghanistan and southern Iraq.

“We are in no doubt that this is a difficult challenge,” says Grand Challenge programme leader, Andy Wallace.

Software control

Of the 23 initial entries from teams made up of private companies and universities, 11 were selected to take part in the final, with six thought promising enough to receive MoD funding.

One funded team, the , uses two aerial robots and one ground-based one.

A 3m wing-span unmanned air vehicle (UAV) will fly 65 metres above the village and use cameras to gather wide-area surveillance used by software to direct a smaller, 1m UAV flying at 20 metres, and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), (see image, middle right).

Those two vehicles use thermal, visual, and radar sensors to make more detailed observations that can be reported back to the base station.

“Physically, the vehicles all have to be launched by someone,” explains Julia Richardson, Director of Stellar Research, “but after that, the mission-planning software hosted at the ground station takes full control.”

Owl swarm

A team called uses more robots. “We need to gather as much sensory information as possible,” says team leader Stephen Crampton, “so we’re using eight vehicles. And we’re going by air because it gives you more viewing angles.”

Dubbed “Owls”, their battery-powered, Frisbee-sized vehicles weigh under a kilogram and have four small propellers (see image, right). Able to hover and dart like birds, they are GPS-guided and communicate with one another, and the base station, using Wi-Fi. Each Owl carries a trio of 5 megapixel cameras.

“Without giving too much away, the processing power on board each of these vehicles is pretty impressive,” adds Crampton. “They could run full-blown Windows Vista.”

User-friendly tech

A third team, , has opted to rely less heavily on autonomous vehicles. They have used off-the-shelf technology for the hardware as much as possible, and focused more development onto image recognition and analysis software.

“If you can automate that part, then you have a useful tool,” explains team leader, Norman Gregory. “What we intend to do is deploy various platforms, depending on what the scenario is.”

The team will use a mixture of ground and air-based vehicles, although the team is not yet releasing the exact details. The main ground vehicle is the size of a ride-on lawnmower (see image, bottom right) and can be GPS-guided or remotely directed by a human.

Robots – Learn more about the robotics revolution in our continually updated .