Dynamic Bayesian Adjustment of Dwell Time for Faster Eye Typing

• Published in: IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering Vol. 28; no. 10; pp. 2315 - 2324
• Main Authors: Pi, Jimin, Koljonen, Paul A., Hu, Yong, Shi, Bertram E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.10.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bayesian analysis; Computational modeling; Disabilities; Dwell time; Eye tracking; eye typing; History; human computer interaction; Indexes; Keyboards; Layout; motor disability; Predictive models; Spinal cord injuries; Transcription; Typing
• ISSN: 1534-4320; 1558-0210; 1558-0210
• DOI: 10.1109/TNSRE.2020.3016747

Eye typing is a hands-free method of human computer interaction, which is especially useful for people with upper limb disabilities. Users select a desired key by gazing at it in an image of a keyboard for a fixed dwell time. There is a tradeoff in selecting the dwell time; shorter dwell times lead to errors due to unintentional selections, while longer dwell times lead to a slow input speed. We propose to speed up eye typing while maintaining low error by dynamically adjusting the dwell time for each letter based on the past input history. More likely letters are assigned shorter dwell times. Our method is based on a probabilistic generative model of gaze, which enables us to assign dwell times using a principled model that requires only a few free parameters. We evaluate our model on both able-bodied subjects and subjects with a spinal cord injury (SCI). Compared to the standard dwell time method, we find consistent increases in typing speed in both cases. e.g., 41.8% faster typing for able-bodied subjects on a transcription task and 49.5% faster typing for SCI subjects in a chatbot task. We observed more inter-subject variability for SCI subjects.