NEW TURKISH VIRTUAL KEYBOARD APPLICATION USING SIMPLE CAMERA-MOUNTED EYEGLASSES

In recent years, many studies have been conducted to enable people with ALS and similar neuromuscular diseases to communicate by writing with their eyes. The methods used in the literature have various disadvantages: electrooculography-based methods involve electrical connections that come into contact with the person, infrared camera-based methods are commercial systems with high costs, and webcam-based methods have low performance. In this study, a Turkish virtual keyboard application that allows eye-typing based on an eye-tracking system created with a mini camera mounted on the frame of glasses was introduced, and its performance was tested. Experiments were conducted with 20 healthy volunteers in two sessions on different days, and typing speed, accuracy, and user satisfaction of the system were measured. In the first session, users were able to write the given pangram with an average speed of 6.19 words/minute and an accuracy of 94.1%, while in the second session, they were able to write it with an average speed of 6.74 words/minute and an accuracy of 95.5%. With the word completion feature added to the system, typing speed has increased even more. It has been evaluated that the developed system can be an alternative to commercial systems in terms of price performance.