PSYCHOLOGY / CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

faceLAB® utilizes special tracking techniques to enable easy tracking of child subjects.

Eye tracking and the study of infants and children long been plagued with difficult to use, cumbersome hardware, long setup times and of course, often uncooperative subjects. This latest release of faceLAB® is the first to offer features specifically aimed at reducing the complexity and hassle in obtaining reliable and useful data in psychology studies of infants and children, as well as adults.

Building on a solid foundation of automatic initialisation, ease of use and a fully integrated non-contact tracking system, faceLAB® v4 goes a long way to solving some of these classic operational issues. Record eye, head and blink events as subjects watch with a screen as well as objects in the environment—then transmit the data in realtime across the lab or log it for later analysis.

There are no helmets or wires to distract, influence or irritate your young subject—all of faceLAB's® measurements are obtained entirely by a fast video. The cameras are remote—well out of reach—up to five feet distant for eye tracking or several times that distance if you are just interested in tracking their head position. True blink information is also captured by the same tracking technology—even when the subject is moving. And with only a single tracking engine at work—there is no need to combine a separate head tracking measurement stream. Analysis of data is made easier with support of tools like GazeTracker, MatLab™ and Excel™, or take the raw data into the package of your choice.

The stimulus control panel contains a number of flexible customisation options to suit the calibration requirements of your subject (left). When calibrating the gaze to the screen, the number of calibration points can be set between 1, 5 and 9—particularly useful with difficult subjects (right).

More then just an eye-tracker, faceLAB® can function as a fully automatic head-tracker for experimental setups with broader scope that don't require eye gaze. Extremely uncooperative subjects can always complicate the setup of an experiment, but once configured, these calibrations can be saved and re-used in a later session.

faceLAB™ produces accurate data on-time, in the toughest of tracking environments. From outdoor intelligent vehicle or aerospace studies through to screen & web usability, stimulus response and laboratory environments, faceLAB™ provides high accuracy and tolerance to a wide range of operational conditions.

New in faceLAB™ v4 is a leading-edge active illumination technique, increasing the fidelity and accuracy of gaze assessment. Track each eye independently, and if the subject is close enough, even track pupil size and vergence. If conditions degrade, faceLAB™ continues to maintain the confidence of its classic, robust tracking system by default. Analyse and model fatigue and drowsiness in real-time with faceLAB™'s true blink analysis and PERCLOS fatigue assessment, including data on the minutia of eyelid behavior. Measurements are taken accurately on eyelid position rather than bright pupil or corneal occlusion.

Eliminate the hassle of interference, setup and correlation issues associated with traditional contact-based tracking methods—faceLAB™ does not use any RF, ultrasonic or electromagnetic systems. Our unique visual tracking system provides a single stream of data. No need to stitch or align multiple tracking devices to obtain a result. No painstaking calibration of separate head tracking systems—faceLAB™ itself caters to changes in pose or the movement of a subject. Specific techniques have been implemented in faceLAB™ v4 to enable easier calibration of children and uncooperative subjects.

Minimise the time, cost and headache associated with experiments with faceLAB™'s unparalleled ease of use, quality of support and user-friendly interface. faceLAB™'s hallmark automatic initialisation feature has been improved, and now produces raw gaze output automatically, as well as head position and blink events over a wider field of view. Laboratory or simulator implementations are further enhanced—a wide variety of digital simulation platforms and third-party analysis tools are now natively supported. Get direct representation of subject interaction inside your simulation environment, in real-time, and synchronised correctly to the experiment. Don't restrict your eye tracking experiments to screens—faceLAB™ continues to offer a fully integrated 3D world model that encompasses physical objects as well as displays.

Maintain data and tracking integrity through a range of lighting and movement conditions. faceLAB™ immediately recovers if a subject leaves the field of view, and the system is robust to occlusion or sudden movement. Work with all faces and all eye types, with or without contact lenses and with most eye-glasses. Work in bright sunlight or at night time, with subjects close to the camera or several metres away. Even if you can't see the eyes—if the subject is wearing sunglasses for instance—faceLAB™ still finds the head pose, eyes and mouth, and continues to produce accurate, robust and reliable data. Added flexibility is provided with the new ultra-wide field of view mode, allowing experiments with distant subjects or a variable experimental area. Reduce the amount of data stored or transmitted with variable width logging—capture only the data you need, and send it across a network where you need it.

Develop real-time applications using the faceLAB™ freely available SDK, enabling other systems to localise salient facial features such as the eyes and mouth, in real-time, across standard network interfaces.

Seeing Machines has simplified the path to commercialising products based on faceLAB™ technology with a licensable core now available.