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What Are You Looking At? 367

Posted by michael from the mirror-into-the-soul dept.
Ensign Stinky writes "The NYTimes has a story, with some spooky-cool pictures, about software to extract exactly what image a person is seeing with their eyes, just from the reflection on their cornea. You can see even a wider image than the subject and tell what they're specifically focusing on. It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.' Remind anyone of that scene in the movie 'Wild Wild West' where they extract the last thing the dead guy saw?"
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What Are You Looking At? More

What Are You Looking At?

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  • Thoughtcrime (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:47AM (#9844287) Homepage Journal
    It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.'

    Hey guys, like much of the popular sci-fi literature will illustrate, its not what you might be looking at or visually or cognitvely attending to or even thinking.......its what you actively do with those thoughts or attentions. Prosecuting folks for visual attention to things that stand out (like items folks covet such as that rather nice looking Porsche below and outside my window) will be fruitless. Same goes for prosecuting "thoughtcrimes". However, cheating on exams.......could be more easily documented I suppose.....
    • Dr. Nishino and Dr. Nayar plan to try their corneal imaging system with archival photographs. "It will be fascinating to go back and look at photographs of important people like John Kennedy," Dr. Nayar said. "From a single image of the eye, we may be able to figure out what was around him and what he was looking at."


      C'mon...we all know it was that buxom blonde in the front row....

    • Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:12AM (#9844619)
      In the US at least we do prosecute throught crimes under the guise of "hate crime".

      If I shot you because I didn't like your race the punishment is more severe than if I shot you just because I thought it would be fun.

      • Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:51AM (#9845139) Journal

        While I also believe that is is worthless to distinguish "hate crimes" from "ordinary crimes," we still prosecute based on "thoughts." Pre-meditated murder is an example. The *intent* of a criminal is nothing more than what they were thinking. And that plays a major role in the punishment.

    • Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)

      by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:30AM (#9844827)

      There is no way you can tell what the person is mentally processing by virtue of the fact that a particular image happened to be reflected in their eye. All you can reasonably conclude is that they were facing in a particular direction. What if, for example, someone was merely staring into space, with their thoughts wandering between and betwixt something completely unrelated? Isn't that what we call daydreaming? What rational conclusion could you you possibly draw in a situation like this, and how could you refute someone's claim to the contrary?

      • Re:Exactly (Score:3, Informative)

        by BWJones ( 18351 ) *
        There is no way you can tell what the person is mentally processing by virtue of the fact that a particular image happened to be reflected in their eye. All you can reasonably conclude is that they were facing in a particular direction.

        You CAN however correlate what a person is looking at with a brain waveform called a P300. That waveform is essentially an evoked potential that signals recognition. It does not tell you anything else about that recognition, only that the person has seen the image or obje

      • Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Abm0raz ( 668337 )
        Even better, what about people like me (who are colorblind) or those with Opsoclonus (Eyes vibrate back and forth rapidly)?

        Truly colorblind people lack the fovea. It's the massive cluster of cones near the center of your retina. When you "focus your eyes on something" you are actually setting it so the image of what you are looking at lands on your fovea. I on the other hand, tend to look over people's shoulder's when talking to them or even near 90 degrees away. This is cause I have a much better deta

    • Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GTRacer ( 234395 ) <gtracer308NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:44AM (#9845021) Homepage Journal
      Well, I once got a parking ticket for "intent to park" in an unauthorised space. I pulled into a parking garage (dedicated to customers) to ask for directions to an appropriate employee lot as my assigned one was full.

      I got the directions and was ticketed for parking in the customer garage. Mind you, I wasn't IN the garage yet (it has a long driveway leading to it), and I never exited my car. In fact, the first thing I did when I saw the guard was to ask for the directions.

      He gave me the directions, a ticket, and turned me around. His rationale? He knows how employees like to take advantage...

      GTRacer
      - Find the umbrella.

      • Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sharkdba ( 625280 )
        Well, I once got a parking ticket for "intent to park" in an unauthorised space.

        Reminds me of a joke popular in Poland in early 80's. This was after the martial law was issued, and part of it was police hour from 10p.m. to 6 a.m. Nobody was allowed on the streets during these hours.

        So, 2 policemen keeps patrolling the streets. Time is 9:50pm, and they see a man walking in a fast pace. One of the policemen takes his gun and shots the man. The other policeman asks: "why did you shot him? It's only 9:50?

  • Here we go again... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jlgolson ( 19847 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:47AM (#9844295) Homepage Journal
    Why is surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior bad? It seems like it would be good, because the cameras will not be watching the vast majority of people walking by. Just the ones that are darting from person to person, or back and forth looking for cops.

    Also, why didn't the poster mention "use in interfaces for quadriplegics who use their gaze to operate a computer". Sounds like that is a lot more interesting to the Slashdot crowd than surveillance cameras.

    Sounds kinda nifty to me. As far as the surveillance part, they won't learn that much from me. Guys look at breasts a LOT. Wow. Newsflash.

    • Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:52AM (#9844367) Homepage Journal
      So people like me, who are inherently paranoid, are at higher risk?

      Great...I knew this would happen. :)
    • Because there are people that naturally paranoid enough to look at everyone coming towards them. Which is kinda ironic, the more paranoid you are, the more reason to be paranoid.

    • Re:Here we go again... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's amazing how many people believe that a camera can pick out the people with suspicious behavior without looking at everybody.

      The camera will record everybody. The person/computer program reviewing the recording might choose to keep only the recordings of 'suspicious' people-but I doubt it. Bureaucrats are CYA types-and it's much more CYA to keep *everything*.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:04AM (#9844519)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tsg ( 262138 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:17AM (#9844669)
      Just the ones that are darting from person to person, or back and forth looking for cops.

      Or scanning the crowd looking for someone they're meeting. What, exactly, about "darting eyes" indicates criminal or suspicious behavior?

      Sounds kinda nifty to me. As far as the surveillance part, they won't learn that much from me. Guys look at breasts a LOT. Wow. Newsflash.

      They won't just know that guys look at breasts a lot. They will know whose breasts you were looking at. Big difference.

    • Re:Here we go again... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by WD_40 ( 156877 )
      I'm constantly scanning crowds and examining people, looking for criminal activity or precursors to such activity. Does that make me a bad guy?


    • Even those of us with functioning limbs will be wanting this on our computers.

      Mouse and cursor focus is ALWAYS where I'm looking at, dammit. :-)

    • Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:31AM (#9844837) Homepage
      It doesnt matter anyways. 99% of all surveillance cameras are extremely low end and have even less resolution than the televisions and VHS recorders that are viewing/recording them.

      Only extremely high end professional Tv cameras have anywhere near the 700 lines of resolution that NTSC is capable of and most CCTV or surveillance cameras not only have much less than 2/3rd that resolution, but their optics, I.E. lens sucks horribly.

      Nobody has a surveillance system with cameras that have $30,000.00US lenses on them and $50,000.00 cameras.

      It's a neat idea, but you can not extract information from nothing. and at that low of a resolution that most all video equipment is at they will extract nothing from the blurry-blob that is the reflection in their suspect's eyes.

      Unless they are standing within 18 inches of the camera... then I would syspect that the "criminal" would be a tiny bit suspicious.

      dont get me wrong, it's neat but the journalist stretched the truth and extrapolated ideas that were way out in outerspace and 100% impossible without insanely expensive equipment.

    • Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Informative)

      by pz ( 113803 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @12:17PM (#9845475) Journal
      IAAVR (I am a visual researcher) who professionally studies eye position. We use a number of methods to do this, but one of the easiest and quickest way to measure a person's eye position is to arrange an off-the-shelf video camera with telephoto lens to point at the subject's eye. Plenty of software then exists to extract the iris position and therefore the position of the eye in the orbit, and therefore the point in space where the user is looking. Naturally, a more expensive whiz-bang camera will give you better data, but with a run-of-the-mill consumer grade camera you can do better than 1 degree of accuracy. This sort of thing is already done for quadraplegics.

      How do you turn this into a high-resolution image of what the subject is looking at? You point a (better) camera in the opposite direction and either adjust it's position to match, or computationally select out the portion of the image where the subject is looking.

      Now, that isn't exactly what these researchers did, but it would be a whole lot easier (and it's what we do on a daily basis).

      And, for those who don't have a photography habit, many of the current-issue SLRs (Canons, specifically) already read your eye position with some nifty technology that uses reflections of IR LEDs off your cornea and focuses the camera where you're looking in the frame. (If you haven't used a camera which does this, try it; you'll never go back.)

      The point? Technology to read eye position exists, and some of it is pretty old (eg, if you're willing to put a contact lens in your eye, then techniques from the 60s work fine). The ONLY interesting part these people did was to use the reflection off the front surface of the eye (which despite what another poster suggests is very high fidelity if captured with high-quality hardware) and applied the appropriate reflection model to undo the optical distortion of looking in the equivalent of a curved mirror. Think of it this way: if we all wore those mirrored sunglasses from the 70s, despite not having exact eye position information, just approximate gaze direction from head angle, we'd be able to tell more-or-less what each person was looking at.
  • Dr. Nishino and Dr. Nayar plan to try their corneal imaging system with archival photographs. "It will be fascinating to go back and look at photographs of important people like John Kennedy," Dr. Nayar said. "From a single image of the eye, we may be able to figure out what was around him and what he was looking at."

    After scanning archives for minutes after I saw this posted to the Mysterious Future I was able to reconstruct what JFK was looking at in large crowds of people. Using highly technical appli

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:47AM (#9844305)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Okay... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Agent Green ( 231202 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:48AM (#9844311)
    So I need to wear my tinfoil hat AND dark sunglasses!

  • Forget the government... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trigun ( 685027 ) <evil@nosPAM.evilempire.ath.cx> on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:48AM (#9844314)
    This is really going to get me in shit with the wife.

  • blade runner (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moojin ( 124799 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:49AM (#9844321)
    this kind of reminds me of the photograph analyzer in blade runner. i wonder if the scene in the movie would be considered prior art if a similiar machine or process were developed today.

  • Wild Wild West (Score:3, Funny)

    by milkme123 ( 302350 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:49AM (#9844322)
    (bit about 'Wild Wild West')

    Hmm.. No, I think I can safely say that I blocked it out of my memory.

    As long as I don't watch it before I die, no one will ever know that I saw it!
  • ...don't get any real-time version of this, i'm in the clear.

  • The answer (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now, we can finally answer the age old question.

    WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STARING AT?!
  • Looked pretty bad.

    Did see a movie called "Lookers" a REALLY long time ago, where a test subject would sit in a chair and look at ads. They used something similar to this to determine what the subject was focusing on in the ad.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Remind anyone of that scene in the movie 'Wild Wild West' ...

    No. I have absolutely no memory of that movie. It had something to do with jabbing my eyes and ears repeatedly.

  • Sexual Harrasment claims up by 500% (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:50AM (#9844347)
    BEEP!

    Female worker: Stop looking at my breasts!

    Male worker: I wasn't!

    BEEP!

    Female worker: Argh! You did it again!

    BEEP!
  • At least they dont have to pull your eyeballs out and shine a light through them to make it work.

  • battleship (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Old trick, new tech. When I was a kid, I discovered that sitting in the right light allowed me to see my opponents board in their eyes while playing battleship. I never let out the secret and I always won.

  • Old technology (Score:5, Funny)

    by FerretFrottage ( 714136 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:51AM (#9844362)
    Women have been able to detect what men are looking at for centuries.

    (.)(.) ---> Hey you, read the comment above first

  • ok so they can see what a person is seeing, but will they be able to correctly pinpoint what connection the viewer's mind has made?

    Or *exactly* what is he/she thinking?

    Or what that sight/object in line of vision, has triggered?

  • Can help spot fakes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EnnTeeDee ( 799496 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:52AM (#9844370)
    Very cool! Seems like this might be used to help spot Photoshop modifications -- for example, in a group picture, just compare the reflections in each person's eyes.
    • EnnTeeDee wrote:

      Very cool! Seems like this might be used to help spot Photoshop modifications -- for example, in a group picture, just compare the reflections in each person's eyes.

      I doubt that would be practical; in a group-photo situation, even when the resolution is extremely high, the eyes of each person are only several pixels wide. And despite the apparently remarkable resolving power of this new method, there is no way you can do any useful amount of image extracting on a fuzzy dot.

  • I'm betting that glasses (sunglasses or regular prescription) will throw this off. Without knowing the prescription of the lenses, it's hard to compute the refraction angle to get an accurate look at what the cornea is seeing. If it's anything like the "face recognition" software, this will pose no threat. Nothing to see here, move along.

  • I Spy (Score:5, Funny)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:52AM (#9844373)
    I'm going to get this and become I-Spy Champion of the world! Mu ha ha ha ha (etc).

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by jdtanner ( 741053 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:54AM (#9844405) Homepage
    I can imagine it now...

    Spy1: What is he looking at?
    Spy2: Hang on...it's still processing...
    Spy1: Well?
    Spy2: He's looking at two guys wearing shades and dark coats operating a massive camera and computer!
    Spy1: Doh!

    John

  • Hope my gf doesn't see this (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tenebrious1 ( 530949 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:54AM (#9844407) Homepage
    GF: "So, why were you staring at her? And her? And her? You didn't even *look* at her face! And that one? Another? How many women *do* you stare at walking to work???"

  • Archival Photos? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by oostevo ( 736441 )
    "It will be fascinating to go back and look at photographs of important people like John Kennedy," Dr. Nayar said. "From a single image of the eye, we may be able to figure out what was around him and what he was looking at."

    I strongly doubt any archival photo negatives or digital replicas have the quality or the resolution to be able to do work like this.

    In the realm of digital photos, I seriously doubt the 3 pixels representing the eye of a world leader from a 640x480 image would be enough to reconstr

    • Don't underestimate film! Old film photos have at least as much detail as modern digital cameras. Many professionals still refuse to use digital because film offers much more detail. Particularly if the authors of this software intend to extract these images from professional photographers' pictures, they WILL be high quality.

  • How to apply the technology (Score:4, Interesting)

    by webword ( 82711 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:57AM (#9844434) Homepage
    There is a lot of good research out there on how to use the data gathered form eye tracking. You can test web site designs [uie.com] and expose weaknesses in design [silicon.com], for example. You can also use eye tracking as an input device [cre8asiteforums.com] (PDF). I like that it can tell you what people read [poynterextra.org] on the internet.

    Just remember, what matters is how the technology is applied, not the technology itself. Without users, you just have slabs of technology sitting there. People make this stuff interesting.

  • If you're gonna ... (Score:2, Informative)

    by XP-Elwood ( 627300 )
    quote only half of the sentence (and spread FUD by doind so) at least use the *whole sentence*. "Because the algorithms can track exactly where a person is looking, the system may one day find use in surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior or in interfaces for quadriplegics who use their gaze to operate a computer."
  • Remind anyone of that scene in the movie 'Wild Wild West' where they extract the last thing the dead guy saw?

    You actually saw Wild Wild West and are willing to admit it? We were just ridiculing Will Smith the other day here and decided that WWW might be his worst film ever.

  • ARTICLE TEXT (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Ultimate Fartkno ( 756456 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:58AM (#9844446)
    Well, mostly it's breasts.

    - NY Times
    Friday, 7/30/04

  • The first thing I thought of.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wolfemi1 ( 765089 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:58AM (#9844449)
    ....was a military targeting device. If you could calibrate a device to fire a computer-controlled gun at whatever the operator was looking directly at... well, that's kind of scary.
    • Don't they already have something like that built into a helmet... Like this? [globalsecurity.org]

    • Re:The first thing I thought of.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by GeekZilla ( 398185 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:38AM (#9844930)
      Well, actually they already have that-sort of. The Apache attack helicopter uses a targeting system that aims based on what the pilot looks at. Except that it uses a monocle over the right eye of the pilot. The monocle displays targeting information and presents a cross-hairs to the pilot. The pilot merely puts the cross-hairs on his target by turning his head and "looking" at it with the monocle and then pressing the trigger for the appropriate weapon. However, it's not REALLY based on what his eyeball is focused on, it's what the cross-hairs are pointed at. He could point the monocle towards the horizon and without moving his head, he could rotate his eyeballs to look down and fire, but unless he moves his head, the guns/missiles will still fire at what the monocle is pointed/looking at. Here are just a few pages that a quick Google [google.com] search turned up: How Apache Helicopters Work-Controls and Sensors [howstuffworks.com] or "PBS-Frontline [pbs.org] or this page that talks about the M142 INTEGRATED HELMET AND DISPLAY SIGHT SYSTEM (IHADSS) [howstuffworks.com]specifically.
  • I wonder whether 'Ghost in the shell: Stand Alone Complex' provided any influence for this, was simply influenced by it or simply had two groups thinking of the same thing. If you have seen the series you will know what I mean.

  • one case in which it wouldn't work... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by underpar ( 792569 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:00AM (#9844472) Homepage
    You know how sometimes you can stare at something and not realize it? That's me and my daft self most of the time. So... even though you look you don't see, right? No one can prove you actually noticed it.
  • Perhaps this is a bit scifi - but you could apply this knowledge and build a projector that transmits narrow band at a subject's eye.

    Imagine being able to make things invisible by replacing the light hitting the cornea. You could hide things in plain site. Hide doors. Make things appear that don't exist.

  • child abuse (Score:2, Interesting)

    by musikit ( 716987 )
    imagine if this technology was used by the police to take a picture of a child being abused and by centering in on their eye create a image of the child abuser.

    OTH the guy in the cubile next to mine has his daughter threaten to call the police and claim child abuse if he didnt buy her a video game.

    i got an idea when we are born lets implant our children with visual recorders that automatically alert police if the child sees any mishaps.

  • "You know he's the villain, because he's got shifty eyes." -- Homer Simpson to Mel Gibson.

  • Lawful Evidence in Court??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vexler ( 127353 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:06AM (#9844536) Journal
    The article indicates that this technology may one day be used in high-end surveillance systems or (further down the road) in retail stores where retailers track what you look at the most.

    I wonder if an evidence extracted using this technology can be used in a court of law. Specifically, if this technology can say, "Yes, you were picking out the face of our undercover cop in the crowd whom you thought was your dealer", versus "No, you were just sort of looking over the crowd but not at anyone particular." On one hand, the judge could admit the evidence since it was not extracted by coercion or by torture (you may not even be aware that you were under surveillance). But the judge could also throw it out based on privacy laws and "unreasonable search and seisure".
  • I remember an article long ago about the possibility of somehow reading and reconstructing the last images from the eyes of a recently dead person. I think it was a serious project. It has some obvious applications for murder investigations.

    Now that is really getting spooky.

  • This technology would ruin that Taxi Driver scene (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    De Niro may have been able to pull it off, but "There is a 93.245% probability that you are looking at me" just wouldn't have the same ring to it.
  • Remind anyone of that scene in the movie 'Wild Wild West' where they extract the last thing the dead guy saw?"

    Uh, no, because no one actually saw the movie Wild Wild West, speaking of what people are seeing.


  • If this thing works by reading the reflection off your eyeball, then don't you have to be looking at a camera (or at least have one in your field of view) for this to work?

    If so, then other than stealing things like passwords and ATM and credit card numbers, what's the point? When else am I likely to be looking at something incriminating (or at least interesting) while sitting still?
  • "Here we go again ... Why is surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior bad?"

    Jesus, I'm continually amazed (and depressed) by the number of exceptionally bright people on slashdot who JUST DON'T GET IT.

    Here's why it's bad.

    1. WHO defines "suspicious"?

    2. WHAT are they allowed to do about it? (remember "Vanilla Sky")

    3. WHAT are they allowed to do with the INFO? Keep it forever? For what purpose?

    4. WHAT other consequences eventually flow, as a result of people becoming de-sensitized to these
    • [correction, that obviously should have said "YOUR privacy & rights", not "You're". I was het up.]
    • 1. WHO defines "suspicious"?

      I am already under investigation if I'd like to go to the US by plane. I have to supply all kinds of information, like Visa#, biometrics and lord what more.

      Of course I understand it is very suspicious if you want to go to the US and that alone is enough to be under investigation. (kidding)

      But back to 1. flying to the US in my eyes is not a de facto reason to be suspicious, yet it is a reason to be investigated...

  • Looking through animal eyes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by base_chakra ( 230686 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:16AM (#9844661)
    Although the author of the article declares that "the system can automatically recover wide-angle views of what people are looking at" (emphasis mine), to me one of the most exciting potential applications is to further human understanding of what animals choose to look at.

    With our current knowledge of ocular biology we can make some assertions about what color ranges different species can see, but being able to study more precisely what they choose to focus on and what conditions attract their attention would advance our understanding of other species tremendously.

  • Yes, those evil quadriplegics must be stopped! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:17AM (#9844671)
    Talk about seeing a glass half empty - did the poster just ignore the second half of that paragraph:

    Because the algorithms can track exactly where a person is looking, the system may one day find use in surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior or in interfaces for quadriplegics who use their gaze to operate a computer.

    Which do you think is more likley to make it into use first? Do you know how tight most exisitng cameras would have to be zoomed in to get any kind of detail from a reflection in the eye or to be able to determine focus? The focus thing might be easier, but even so we'll probably see accisable interfaces from this before spooky security cams that can tell what everyone in a crowd of hundreds is looking at.
  • I guess I'll be wearing mine from now on.

  • Resolution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:28AM (#9844799) Homepage Journal
    I find the statements about "we can go back to old pictures of JFK and see what he was looking at" to be questionable at best.

    You need a LOT of pixels of the eye itself from which to reconstruct an image. Now, look at how much of a given normal picture the eyes of a person represent.

    You *might* be able to reconstruct where the person is looking. You probably aren't going to have enough pixels to reconstruct what they saw.

    To do that level of imaging you are going to need a picture of the person's eye at high resolution.

    So the government spy cameras will have to zoom in on your eyes - call it about a 500 to one zoom. They will have to track your eyes as you move about.

    And yes, if you wear sunglasses you can defeat this.

    Now, what this WOULD be very useful for would be in combinatino with a head mounted display - since the display device has to subtend a large angle as viewed from the eye, the display device must have a good view of the eye. So combining the display device with an imaging device would allow the system to see what you at what you are looking, so you now have a pointing device. Theoretically, a wink or slow-blink could be a "select" operation.

    Now, if they could get the focus point of the eye, they could REALLY make an interesting system - if you are focusing past the image, they could mute it - reduce the brightness, possibly even reduce the amount of information (iconify apps, reduce update rates, show only "critical" items, etc.) When they detect you've shifted focus to bring the display into focus, brighten up. Think of looking through a dirty windshield, then shifting focus to the dirt on the glass.

  • I remember seeing a special on this tech (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fullmetal55 ( 698310 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:29AM (#9844816)
    it was being developed with the US air force. to help train pilots and to investigate causes of crashes. the goal was to use the technology along with the black box so that they could tell how long the pilot was looking at each gauge. possibly allowing a bit more insight early on, like he was checking the fuel gauge more often. maybe it was going down to quickly. also to help pilots more efficiently scan their gauges. they found they could shave off a few seconds every minute if they adjusted the order they scan the gauges, that wasn't very long but found inefficiencies and were able to shave precious seconds off seconds that if were spent looking in the right places they could save lives... that sounds like a benevolent use of the technology to me...
  • rtfa poster

  • "Bladerunner" (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ah.clem ( 147626 )
    When "Bladerunner" first came out I called bullshit on the "photothingamizer" that let Deckard scan around in a photo and pick up and enhance images from a convex mirror in the photo.

    Once again, it looks like I was wrong.

    This technology shit is just plain scary.

    Being Modd'ed (Score:0, Troll) for telling an idiot to RTFM before modding? - Priceless!
  • It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.'

    This is not a troll (disclaimer??). What else can this be used for? I can see possibilities for blind people once technology is at a point where it can more closely interface with the brain, but other than that, what else is there except Big Brother? Oh, sorry, robots!

  • Stupid Quote in the article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by multimed ( 189254 ) <mrmultimediaNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:40AM (#9844950)
    It may also prove important to journalists, said John V. Pavlik, a professor and chairman of the department of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. "One problem with eyewitness accounts that journalists and others rely on is that these accounts are limited," he said, by people's ability to recall accurately what they have seen.

    Well now if there's actually a camera there that happens to take a high resolution photo of an eyewitness, wouldn't it be much more likely that the actual incident gets photographed. You don't really need eyewitnesses so much if there's actually photos of a scene. On the off chance that there happens to be a camera around, and on the slight possibility that the photographer ignores whatever event is going on and just snaps high quality photos of people's eyes then by all means this could be a revolutionary tool. Sure.

  • Mouse replacement? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrCode ( 95839 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @12:17PM (#9845479)
    Would be cool if this could work with a computer. Instead of "focus-follows-mouse", I'd like to have "focus-follows-eyes". Lots of times, I'll look at a window and start to type in it, then realize that I hadn't moved the mouse over it to get focus.

  • Inherently flawed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:23PM (#9846338) Homepage Journal
    When I started in martial arts (decades ago - I teach now) I had pretty normal vision. Look right at something, see that something, everything else is pretty much tuned out. I could see some motion at the periphery, but that was really all.

    I was trained to use my peripheral vision - exercises like counting fingers further and further out from the target you're looking at progressively increase your ability first to discriminate detail that you usually don't process, and progressively widen the field of view so that you take in more at a glance.

    In martial arts sparring, it is very useful to see something coming, essentially, to see it early. There is plenty of reinforcement, both positive and negative, in that environment. Learning this well pays numerous dividends in the arts. It is an interesting general ability as well.

    At this point in my life, I can "look" right at you in the sense that a centered axis out of my pupil draws a line to one of your eyes. At the same time, I can actively study something I can see very clearly that is considerably off that axis, behind you, somewhat off to your side, and way out of the same focus plane your face is in. You won't know, and gear like this wouldn't know either. I'm "looking right at you" as far as any observer is concerned.

    I learned to do this - I certainly couldn't do it at all before actively training to do it. I teach my students to do it. The initial level of ability varies from person to person, but I've yet to encounter anyone who couldn't improve markedly over six months or so of daily exercises. I suspect that if the technology being discussed here comes into any kind of use where it is actually a social/legal issue, others will learn it just as well. You could probably detect the focal plane being different (the eye's physical configuration after all does change based on the focal plane) but this whole center of attention thing is absolutely defeatable.

    I have high confidence that until or unless you can actually read minds and determine cognitive intent, this kind of technology will be very limited in application and reliability. We should ask, who will be motivated to learn to defeat such a mechanism by it becoming a law enforcement tool? It seems to me that the most obvious answer is those who have some kind of subversive orientation. Criminals, to put it more bluntly.

    Action, reaction.

  • Dr. Who, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:26PM (#9850125)
    Remind anyone of that scene in the movie 'Wild Wild West' where they extract the last thing the dead guy saw?

    No. Was it a rip-off of the Dr. Who episode where they extract the latent image from a dead guy's retina?

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