A multimodal interface to resolve the Midas-Touch problem in gaze controlled wheelchair

• Published in: 2017 39th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) Vol. 2017; pp. 905 - 908
• Main Authors: Meena, Yogesh Kumar, Cecotti, Hubert, Wong-Lin, KongFatt, Prasad, Girijesh
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01-07-2017
• Subjects: Graphical user interfaces; Human computer interaction; Navigation; Portable computers; Usability; Visualization; Wheelchairs
• ISSN: 1557-170X
• DOI: 10.1109/EMBC.2017.8036971

Human-computer interaction (HCI) research has been playing an essential role in the field of rehabilitation. The usability of the gaze controlled powered wheelchair is limited due to Midas-Touch problem. In this work, we propose a multimodal graphical user interface (GUI) to control a powered wheelchair that aims to help upper-limb mobility impaired people in daily living activities. The GUI was designed to include a portable and low-cost eye-tracker and a soft-switch wherein the wheelchair can be controlled in three different ways: 1) with a touchpad 2) with an eye-tracker only, and 3) eye-tracker with soft-switch. The interface includes nine different commands (eight directions and stop) and integrated within a powered wheelchair system. We evaluated the performance of the multimodal interface in terms of lap-completion time, the number of commands, and the information transfer rate (ITR) with eight healthy participants. The analysis of the results showed that the eye-tracker with soft-switch provides superior performance with an ITR of 37.77 bits/min among the three different conditions (p<;0.05). Thus, the proposed system provides an effective and economical solution to the Midas-Touch problem and extended usability for the large population of disabled users.