2012.1121
NTNU Outstanding University Group Invented the Low Cost Multi Eyes Tracker
Where would the girls’ eyes stop when they saw the different types of woman’s bags pictures on the Internet? NTNU Forward to Outstanding University Program Vice Professor Ho Hung Fa’s research group found the answer. The answer was that the girls would focus on the main part of the bag first, and then spend most of the time on the features of the bag. The research team applied this low cost but high technique eye tracker “Eye NTNU- 180” to explore the visual reaction of human, and even practically applied in the teaching, educational research and design, and business research.
Many scholars and experts used the “eye tracker” to examine and analyze the sequence of fixation, dwell time, times of fixation, and eye movement data of the examiner to find out the mode of visual. The nowadays computing technology highly raised the function of the “eye tracker”. It could accurately record the eye movement data and transferred to each kind of scan path and hot zone through different kinds of software.
“Eye Tracker” was a very convenient tool to do the research. However, normally the price was too high. The famous “eye tracker” manufacture from Sweden, Tobii, developed a series of “eye tracking system”. The sampling frequency of the Tobii Glasses Eye Tracker detected was only 30 Hz, and the price was up to 1 million and 800 thousands NT dollars. Another same type of eye tracker “I VIEW X ™ HED” developed by SMI had 200 Hz sampling frequency and the price was up to 1 million and 500 thousands NT dollars. Both eye trackers were not affordable by the regular research institute or company. Besides, the current eye trackers could only provide one person to be examined at a time.
In order to make this technique more popular, NTNU research team from Department of Applied Electronics Technology was supported by Ministry of Education, and successfully developed the “Eye NTNU- 180” low cost eye tracker software. The “Eye NTNU- 180” could adjust the sampling frequency from 30 Hz- 180 Hz. The analyzing techniques reached another level as well, including the ROI (region of interest) Tool, Fixation Calculator, Hot Zone Tool, and Scan Path Tool.
The “Eye NTNU- 180” had the high accuracy. The basic cost of the hardware was only 10 thousands NT dollars. It could be applied on education, marketing, web page designed, photos, plain design, aero techniques, medical science, and the to daily life research. The accomplishment of the plan would widen the human visual reaction research field.