JPH06242883A - Inputting device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce a manual operation, and to improve the speed and efficiency of a computer input by making the movement of a cursor on a screen possible to be carried out by the line of sight of an operator. CONSTITUTION:An optical sensor is arranged at a goggle 2, the goggle 2 is mounted on a head 1 of an operator, and an infrared ray from a light source part 3 is transmitted through a first half mirror 6, reflected on a second half mirror 4, and made incident on an eye ball 5. A reflected light from the eye ball 5 is reflected on the half mirrors 4 and 6, and made incident on a CCD camera 7. The incident light is converted into an electric signal by the CCD camera 7, and video-processed by a video processing part 11, an outline is identified by an outline processing part 12, and the direction of the line of light is detected by a coordinate position detecting part 13 as a position coordinate on a display. Then, the position coordinate on the display is decided, and an input part switch 14 is turned on. The switch ON signal and the position coordinate information of the position coordinate detecting part 13 are transmitted from a control part 15 through a signal outputting part 16 to the input port of a computer.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an input device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, input means such as a mouse, a keyboard, a joystick, and a pen input have been put into practical use as an input device for mediating between a person and a computer. Of these, the mouse has fewer input keys than the keyboard, so it has the advantage that it is not complicated to operate, and that it can be operated while looking at the screen, but it has the drawback of moving the cursor slower than the joystick. The joystick has the drawback that it is not suitable for quickly specifying small points on the screen.
Each has advantages and disadvantages. Also, what is common to the above-mentioned input means is that all are operated by human hands, and it is necessary to operate the input device at hand while looking at the display screen of the computer, which is slow, inefficient, This involved complicated manual operations.

[0003]

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides the input means with less manual operation as described above, thereby increasing the speed and efficiency of computer input and reducing the complexity of manual operation. It's about providing what you can.

[0004]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention provides a goggle with an optical sensor, and the goggle is mounted on the head of a person, and infrared rays from a light source section of the optical sensor are emitted. The light passes through the first half mirror and is reflected by the second half mirror to irradiate the eyeball. The reflected light from this eyeball is reflected by the second and first half mirrors,
It is incident on the CCD camera. The CCD camera converts an incident light beam into an electric signal, an image processing unit performs image processing, an outline processing unit identifies an outline, and a coordinate position detection unit detects the direction of the line of sight as position coordinates on the display. It is like this. The position coordinates on the display are determined by the above method and the input unit switch is turned on. The switch ON signal and the position coordinate information of the position coordinate detecting unit are sent from the signal output unit to the input port of the computer via the control unit.

[0005]

With the above arrangement, the input device according to the present invention can track the movement of the line of sight because the position of the image of the camera changes accordingly when the line of sight moves. This line-of-sight movement is contour-processed, and the line-of-sight direction can be detected in real time by comparing the previous line-of-sight position data with the current line-of-sight position data. It can be input to the computer by turning on the switch.

[0006]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS FIG. 1 shows an input device according to the present invention which converts an infrared ray beam directed toward an eyeball, a light beam reflected by a cornea and a light beam reflected by a retina of the beam into an electric signal and inputs the electric signal to a computer. FIG. Reference numeral 1 is a human head, and 2 is goggles attached to the head. 3 is a light source unit, 4 is a second half mirror, and 5 is a human eyeball. The infrared rays emitted from the light source section of the optical sensor pass through the first half mirror 6, are reflected by the second half mirror 4, and are irradiated toward the eyeball. The light reflected by the eyeball is reflected by the second half mirror and the first half mirror and enters the camera 7. Here, the video signal is converted into an electric signal and is processed by the video processing unit 1.
The image processing is performed at 1, the contour processing unit 12 discriminates the image contour of the cornea reflected light and the image contour of the retina reflected light, and the coordinate position detection unit 13 detects the position coordinates on the display. . It should be noted that a predetermined position on the display is designated in advance as the origin of the coordinates, and when the person operates, the operator first looks at the origin of the coordinates and inputs the switch 1
Press 4 to initialize the coordinate position. The coordinate position detector 13 determines the value of the position coordinate data in the subsequent detection operation by this initialization. The position coordinates on the display are determined by the above-described method, and the input unit switch 14 is pressed each time thereafter, and the switch ON signal and the position coordinate data signal are sent from the position coordinate detecting unit to the signal output unit 16 via the control unit 15. Sent to the computer.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the input device for selecting a predetermined position on the display screen of the computer.
1 is a computer, 22 is a display device, and 23
Is a line-of-sight tracking processing unit, 24 is a keyboard, and 25 is goggles equipped with a line-of-sight tracking device. Reference numeral 26 denotes a click button, which corresponds to a mouse button, and when pressed, a selection menu on the screen indicated by the direction of the line of sight is read into the computer. In the above configuration, when a person operating the computer wears goggles and faces the display device and selects a predetermined point on the screen, an eye point (viewpoint) is detected by the eye tracking device of the goggles and the eye tracking is performed. The eyepoint information is sent to the processing unit, converted into the same kind of conventional mouse signal, and transmitted to the computer.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining that the corneal reflected light reflected by the cornea and the retinal reflected light reflected by the retina of the fundus are discriminated by the contour processing section in conjunction with the movement of the line of sight. , 31 is the front surface of the eyeball, 33 is the first half mirror, 32 is the second half mirror, and 34 is the position where the reflected light forms an image. When a beam of infrared rays or the like is directed toward the eyeball, corneal reflected light reflected by the cornea and retinal reflected light reflected by the retina of the fundus of the eye are obtained, and the corneal reflected light has high brightness and a small spot diameter. Since the spot size is low and the spot diameter is large, it is possible to distinguish between the two. Further, since the retina is located on the fundus of the eye, it hardly moves. Therefore, the spot of the corneal reflected light quickly moves around in this almost stationary reflection image of the retina as the line of sight moves. For example, when the line of sight points in the direction of the arrow 35, the corneal reflected light is reflected along the arrows 36, 37 and 38 to form an image.

[0009]

As described above, according to the input device of the present invention, what is conventionally moved by the mouse to move the cursor on the screen by the human is moved by the line of sight of the human. It has the effect of eliminating the hassle of using hands and making it convenient.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of an input device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of an input device according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of an optical system for eyeball reflected light rays according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 head part 2 goggles 3 light source part 4 second half mirror 5 eyeball 6 first half mirror 7 camera 8 glasses window 9 line-of-sight direction 10 line-of-sight direction 11 image processing part 12 contour processing part 13 coordinate position detection part 14 input position switch 15 Control unit 16 Signal output unit

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A goggle in which an optical sensor light-emitting portion, a first half mirror and a second half mirror forming the path of the infrared rays, and a camera for receiving the infrared rays are arranged, and an image of the camera is an electrical signal. A video processing unit for converting the video into a video processing unit, a contour processing unit for processing the video of the video processing unit by a contour, and a coordinate position detection unit for detecting a line-of-sight direction as a position coordinate by the coordinate position detection unit. A switch that outputs coordinates, the video processing unit, a contour processing unit, a coordinate position detection unit, and a control unit that controls the switch,
An input device comprising a signal output unit for outputting a signal of the control unit to a computer.