Gaze-Assisted Typing for Smart Glasses

Abstract

Text entry is expected to be a common task for smart glass users, which is generally performed using a touchpad on the temple or by a promising approach using eye tracking. However, each approach has its own limitations. For more efficient text entry, we present the concept of gaze-assisted typing (GAT), which uses both a touchpad and eye tracking. We initially examined GAT with a minimal eye input load, and demonstrated that the GAT technology was 51% faster than a two-step touch input typing method (i.e.,M-SwipeBoard: 5.85 words per minute (wpm) and GAT: 8.87 wpm). We also compared GAT methods with varying numbers of touch gestures. The results showed that a GAT requiring five different touch gestures was the most preferred, although all GAT techniques were equally efficient. Finally, we compared GAT with touch-only typing (SwipeZone) and eye-only typing (adjustable dwell) using an eye-trackable head-worn display. The results demonstrate that the most preferred technique, GAT, was 25.4% faster than the eye-only typing and 29.4% faster than the touch-only typing (GAT: 11.04 wpm, eye-only typing: 8.81 wpm, and touch-only typing: 8.53 wpm).