Development of an eyewear to measure eye and body movements.

Abstract

To enable precise detection of mental and physical states of users in a daily life, we have been developing an eyewear to measure eye and body movement in a unrestricted way. The horizontal and vertical EOG (electrooculogram) signals are measured and amplified with three metal dry electrodes placed near nasion and both sides of rhinion, of which positions correspond to the bridge and nose pads of eyewear, respectively. The user's mental states like drowsiness, sleepiness, fatigue, or interest to objects can be identified by the movements and blinking of the eyes extracted from the measured EOG. And the six-axis motion sensor (three-axis accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope) mounted in the eyewear measures the body motion. As the sensor located near the head is on the body axis, this eyewear is suitable to measure user's movement or shift of center of gravity during physical exercise with a high precision. The measured signals are used to extract various events of eye and body movement by the mounted microcontroller chip, or can be transmitted to the external devices via Bluetooth communication. This device can enable you to look into "yourself", as well as outer scenes. In this presentation, the outline of the eyewear is introduced and some possible applications are shown.