Beyond Communication and Control: Environmental Control and Mobility by Gaze

This chapter reviews the challenges and requirements in taking gaze-based interaction beyond communication and control, such as environmental control and mobility by gaze. The chapter is divided into two sections: the first section is devoted to environment control and the second to mobility control. Each section starts by introducing its necessary underlying notions and definitions and proceeds by explaining the main arguments for the development of environmental and mobility control and examining the general problems with these areas and of those domain-specific problems related to gaze control. While special attention is devoted to standardization when environment control is at issue, user safety is the priority in mobility control. A brief review of existing commercial or advanced research solutions offered for domotic and mobility control is given for both sections, as is a review of current open research issues. Finally, some promising academic prototypes are described, along with the ways in which their developers are trying to solve some of the problems identified.