The purpose of LC Technologies’ SBIR Project for the Army is to develop a novel human-computer interaction protocol called EvPac, a combined eye and voice-operated system to perform computer point-and-click operations in a moving vehicle. 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”. An eyetracker measures the user’s gazepoint on the computer screen and a speech recognition system detects the verbal commands. No hand activity is involved.

In Phase I, LC Technologies developed a proof-of-concept EvPac system and demonstrated that EvPac is both feasible to implement and natural to use. The Phase I EvPac System consisted of 1) an eyetracker to measure the user’s gazepoint on the computer screen, 2) a voice recognition system to detect the user’s voice commands, and 3) a computer to run standard applications programs.  To activate an icon of interest, the user looks at the icon and speaks a command, such as “click”.

The EvPac Phase I System demonstrated that 1) it is feasible to implement eyetracking, speech recognition, and standard mouse-driven applications in an integrated configuration, 2) as an HCI protocol, EvPac is highly natural and easy to use, i.e. it is natural to point with your eyes and click with your voice, and 3) EvPac can be substituted directly for a manual mouse, i.e. no manual operations are involved at all.

A key issue regarding the feasibility of EvPac in a moving vehicle concerns the ability of people to fix their gaze on an icon while being subjected to the random motions of the vehicle. In a preliminary road test of the Eyegaze System in Phase I, the user reported no difficulty keeping his gaze fixed on objects which were approximately 0.15 inches square.

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