Winner of SMI Programming Competition announced at European Conference on Eye Movements

Aug. 27, 2015 - PRLog -- SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) and the European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM) just announced the winner of the 2015 SMI Eye Tracking Programming Competition at the 18^th ECEM, held August 16 to 21 in Vienna. It is the second time this competition takes place in cooperation with ECEM and SMI. The challenge for participants consists of developing eye tracking application software, software covering eye movement research and/or eye tracking data analysis. The submissions are assessed by an independent jury of scientists.

The prize for the winner, a SMI RED250mobile scientific eye tracker, is awarded to Dimitri Heil, a master’s student from University of Bielefeld. His work on gaze-based browsing was found to be the most convincing contribution by the jury. Heil developed a gaze-enabled web interface that allows users to surf the internet hands-free with their eyes, without using a mouse or keyboard.

The 2015 SMI Eye Tracking Programming Competition ran from the call in October last year to the submission deadline in March 2015. SMI provided remote eye tracking systems on loan to the participants. A jury consisting of academic eye tracking experts reviewed the submissions, and selected the three finalists. Selection criteria included originality, quality, innovation and portability of the software across eye tracking systems.

The finalists presented their software solutions at the 18^th European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM) last week in Vienna, Austria. At the conference, attendees and the jury voted for their favorite software. All three finalists’ software solutions will become part of the shared tools of the EMRA Eye Movements Researchers’ Association.

ECEM 2015 conference chair and organizer Prof. Dr. Ulrich Ansorge, Department of Psychology, University of Vienna says: “We were delighted to continue this valuable format. It gives students a wonderful opportunity to showcase their abilities, and further increase their competence by learning from the feedback of experienced reviewers.”

Dr. Fiona Mulvey, Chair of the Eye Movement Researchers Association, Lund University:
“I was very happy to coordinate the review for this competition. The format is a beneficial contribution to the growing EMRA open source shared tools. EMRA also coordinated the student competition at the last ECEM 2013 in Lund, and we look forward to future competitions and student involvement in growing the field of eye movements research.”

Dr. Meike Mischo, Product Manager, SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI): “SMI promotes the student competition at ECEM because we place great emphasis on supporting the advancement of scientific research. This is why we frequently provide talented researchers with an opportunity to demonstrate their skills. To give scientists the resources and the flexibility to create custom applications for their field, SMI devices have open interfaces, and extensively documented SDKs.”