Final Report Summary - MACAS (Multi-Modal and Cognition-Aware Systems)
MACAS finished early due to the fellow taking up a new research position abroad. Nevertheless, the project made a number of contributions torwards the above research objectives. Core contributions of the project during the reporting period include, based on earlier work of the fellow, further investigations on automatic inference of visual memory recall from visual behaviour, a (so far unpublished) study on inferring user expertise as well as another study on inferring document types from visual behaviour, a robust method for smooth pursuit detection as well as for using smooth pursuit movements for interaction and eye tracker calibration, a novel wearable EOG head cap particularly geared for long-term eye movement recordings, as well as two prototype computer vision systems for eye gesture recognition and model-based gaze estimation on unmodified handheld devices. Through close collaborations with researchers in the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Japan, MACAS further contributed to closely related research efforts on calibration-free gaze-based interaction with situated displays and gaze-based object transfer between ambient and hand-held devices, as well as physical behaviour modelling and qualitative activity recognition. Finally, through the MACAS project, we organised two workshops on pervasive eye tracking and mobile eye-based human-computer interaction at the leading conferences in ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) and eye movement research (ECEM).