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Using people's natural ways of expressing themselves
would make control of a system easier and more productive.
It would also eliminate the need for mice and keyboards,
which are less suitable for use in the sterile conditions of
an operating theater, and allow surgeons to concentrate on
their patients.
Voice-control and head-tracking
Philips Applied Technologies has shown the possibilities
for more natural forms of interaction in medical
environments by creating several 'proof of concept'
technical demonstrators that integrated a range of
technologies already under development within Philips. These
included uWand – a handheld controller that enables control
using hand gestures, a touchless screen (a technology that
allows users to direct the position of the cursor by hand
gesture without the need to touch the screen), plus
voice-control, head-tracking, eye-tracking and gaze-tracking
systems. The voice-control system incorporates sophisticated
adaptive beam-forming technology that enables the system to
'lock on' to a user. Once locked on, the system enhances the
user's voice commands and eliminates background noise and
other people's voices, thus greatly improving the
performance of the voice recognizer. The head-tracking
system combined with the eye-tracking system allows the
orientation of the head to be measured. A further level of
sophistication is added by gaze tracking which tracks the
pupils relative to the eyes to measure precisely where a
person is looking.
Philips Applied Technologies prepared demonstrators for
the annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2005
and 2006 trade shows. At RSNA 2005 these included a reading
room demo using voice, touchless and gaze control, plus a
cathlab demo using uWand and voice control; and at the 2006
show, they included cathlab and 3DRX demos using uWand,
touchless and voice control.
Not only have we integrated the broad range of
technologies into the demos, but its extensive experience in
investigating usage scenarios to gain clear insights into
how people actually use the systems in practice. In this
respect, it was found that gaze tracking, especially the way
a user's gaze is tracked, imposes quite a lot of constraints
on the user which to a great extent negates the benefits of
the hands-free operation. As a result of this, gaze tracking
is currently no longer a part of the hand-free technology
mix.
Include multipoint sensing to allow 2-handed control
The theme, however, has continued with technology
upgrades. The uWand, for example, formerly a camera-based
system, has moved to a LED-based system. The functionality
of the touchless screen has been extended to identify shapes
and to include multipoint sensing to allow 2-handed control.
We are now investigating the possibility of adding two-way
communication to the voice-control system, comprising
text-to-speech functionality that vocalizes on-screen text
to enable the user to receive prompts without the need to
look at the monitor screen.
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