LC Technologies is designing a prototype for the U.S. Army involving the use of a combined eye and voice-operated system to perform computer point-and-click operations in a moving vehicle.

In modern military vehicles, it is increasingly important that an operator interact with a computer to execute his tactical mission. Large vehicle motions encountered in combat environments, however, make it difficult to maintain steady hand movements, and thus make it awkward to manipulate a conventional mouse and keyboard. Neither a mouse nor trackball can be operated accurately within a moving combat vehicle.  Alternative input methods are required to allow the operator to interact with his computer easily, without requiring precise hand control. The development of a point-and-click protocol that is easily operable in a moving vehicle will facilitate a more rapid deployment of computer work stations in military vehicles. 

The purpose of the LC Technologies’ project, therefore, is to develop a novel human-computer interaction protocol, which we call EvPac (“Eye Voice Point And Click").  To point and click an icon with EvPac, the operator simply performs the natural actions of looking at the icon he wishes to activate and speaking a key command word such as “click”.  The Eyegaze System measures the user’s gazepoint on the computer screen and a speech recognition system detects the verbal commands. No hand activity is involved. EvPac will replace the mouse and trackball, which are unwieldy in a moving vehicle environment where it is difficult to maintain steady hand movements. 

EvPac also provides a simplified alternative to voice-only interfaces. For example, EvPac uses only a small set of generic command words that are applicable to all icons, while voice-only approaches in many cases require the user to memorize virtually hundreds of specific verbal commands for the application’s different icons.