From 1987 I worked in the guided weapons division of Marconi Defence, in Stanmore. I can't talk about most of the work I did there - but one of the "side" projects we worked on involved a BBC micro.
The project, as far as I can remember, was called Marconi Eyewatch and it was a partnership between Marconi and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (who were our next door neighbours). This hospital worked with a lot of patients that had serious spinal injuries.
A very clever hardware engineer devised a way of tracking eye movement via sensors placed either side of the users head, these sensors were then connected to the BBC. The BBC micro displayed a keyboard and the user could select words/letters by looking at the screen and then either sucking or blowing into a tube which was also connected to the BBC. I was involved in helping to write the software that provided the user interface.
I'm not sure how successful the system ever was or what happened to it, it disappeared from our office at some point and that was the last involvement I had with it. I've not been able to find any mention of it on the internet, so thought it was worth mentioning here to see if anyone else might know of it.
The project, as far as I can remember, was called Marconi Eyewatch and it was a partnership between Marconi and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (who were our next door neighbours). This hospital worked with a lot of patients that had serious spinal injuries.
A very clever hardware engineer devised a way of tracking eye movement via sensors placed either side of the users head, these sensors were then connected to the BBC. The BBC micro displayed a keyboard and the user could select words/letters by looking at the screen and then either sucking or blowing into a tube which was also connected to the BBC. I was involved in helping to write the software that provided the user interface.
I'm not sure how successful the system ever was or what happened to it, it disappeared from our office at some point and that was the last involvement I had with it. I've not been able to find any mention of it on the internet, so thought it was worth mentioning here to see if anyone else might know of it.
Statistics: Posted by rasto1968 — Sat Jan 11, 2025 8:09 pm