Dwell-free typing using an EOG based virtual keyboard

Abstract

This work presents the development of an asynchronous dwell-free virtual keyboard application which can be operated using electrooculographic (EOG) data. Unlike other EOG based eye typing applications, the developed system avoids the use of dwell-times and relieves the user from the need to perform repetitive and unnatural eye movements tomove a cursor towards the desired letter or the need to perform voluntary blinks to interact with the application. Instead, the proposed application requires the user to simply glance through the vicinity of the desired letters, as one would swipe through letters when typing on a touchscreen device, after which a set of word predictions are displayed for the user to select. The proposed application obtained a top five rate of 76.00 ± 12.61% using EOG data which is comparable to the top five rate of 79.00 ± 13.37% obtained when operating the application using a vision-based eye gaze tracker.