EyeChess: the tutoring game with visual attentive interface

Advances in eye tracking have enabled the physically challenged people to type, draw, and control the environment with their eyes. However, entertainment applications for this user group are still few. The EyeChess project described in this paper is a PC-based tutorial to assist novices in playing chess endgames. The player always starts first and has to checkmate the Black King in three moves. First, to make a move the player selects a piece and then its destination square. To indicate that some squares could be activated, while other ones were forbidden for selection, color highlighting was applied. A square with a green highlight indicated a valid action, and the red color denoted invalid action. There were three options to make a selection: blinking, eye gesture (i.e., gazing at off-screen targets), and dwell time. If the player does not know how to solve the task, or s/he plays by making mistakes, the tutorial provides a hint. This shows up a blinking green highlight when the gaze points at the right square. Preliminary evaluation of the system revealed that dwell time was the preferred selection technique. The participants reported that the game was fun and easy to play using this method. Meanwhile, both the blinking and eye gesture methods were characterized as quite fatiguing. The tutorial was rated helpful in guiding the decision-making process and training the novice users in gaze interaction. Author