WHEN the twelve winners of the 2002 Science Engineering & Technology Student of the Year Awards were recently announced at a black tie dinner in Guildhall, London, one of them was 21 year old Timothy Hospedales, son of Drs James and Shelley Hospedales of St Ann's.
The SET Awards, now in their fifth year, are sponsored by Britain's most prestigious industries, science and technology organisations, and have become the "Oscars" of British science education. This year's competition attracted more than 500 entries from students at Britain's leading universities who submitted a project they have been working on with a citation from their lecturer. Projects which encapsulate the best research and analysis being undertaken in British universities.
The three finalists in each of the twelve categories covering all areas of science and technology and reflecting the wide range of degrees offered by British universities, attended a face-to-face interview in London with the panel of judges, after which the final winner of each category was named and presented with a trophy and cheque for 500 pounds.
Hospedales, who graduated in June with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, received the Misys Award for the Best Computer or Computer Software Student, for his project - Advances In Eye Tracking. Cambridge tutors were so enthusiastic about the developments of Tim's project that he was asked to continue working on it through summer.
What exactly does an Eye Tracking system do? In Tim's own words "The system infers the users exact point of gaze on a screen, allowing users to control the mouse pointer with their eyes. Some severe accidents / disabilities result in people being able to control little more than their eyes. Before eye tracking, they would have to sit passively all day but now, using a system like mine, and software to allow mouse-based typing, they can have full use of a PC."
"What I've actually been doing is to improve on existing systems by using smart software to find the users' pupil and the inner corner of their eye (using the pupil position and a head fix, such as the eye corner, the users point of gaze can be inferred) in a video stream which has two main benefits."
Firstly, this should be more accurate than existing systems and secondly, since existing systems use lots of specialised hardware, the expense of such hardware makes the whole system prohibitively expensive for private use, e.g. 10,000 pounds. Tim's system needs no particular hardware other than a camera - potentially a fifty pound web-cam which greatly reduces the cost. So once the young Trinidadian's system is perfected, any disabled user lacking the use of their hand (s) can afford an eye-tracking system if they are in a position to afford a PC. And as well other potential applications of eye-tracking can emerge, such as, in gaming and more user-friendly interfaces since the price of a system should now be within the range of the home user.
"This has been an absorbing project" he said "it is exciting to work on something that could be really useful. You spend a lot of time at university working on hypothetical projects, but this is something with a very positive application....It should be free and easy to access because it could really help to improve some people's quality of life."
However, on getting some friends to test the system as the project developed "there were some interesting reactions" said Timothy "one of the first things I discovered was that the system didn't like people with blue eyes! I have sorted it out now and anyone can use it."
Born in Cambridge, Timothy came to live in Trinidad at age seven, attended Bishop Anstey Junior School, graduated from St Mary's College with both O and A levels, and entered Jesus College, Cambridge University three years ago. Says his very proud mother, herself a graduate in veterinarian medicine from Cambridge: "he grew up in there so Cambridge is a very familiar city to him."
In October, Timothy will enter the University of Edinburgh in Scotland on a scholarship to do a Masters in Information - looking at Artificial Intelligence. A field which he explains "was initially about designing computers/machines to perform the presumably difficult tasks that we would describe as requiring intelligence for a human to do. This was not quite the right way to look at things as it turned out to be easy to make computers do some things we find difficult and intellectual, like huge mathematical calculations and playing chess, but much harder to make computers do other things we do unconsciously like walk or recognise faces."
"So I guess Artificial Intelligence is really about instilling computers/machines with any of the abilities that humans have and computers don't (yet!). Some might say the ultimate goal of Artificial Intelligence is to create computers with our most magical and inscrutable abilities - that of feeling emotion and self awareness."
Timothy hopes to go on to a PhD and then academic research into Artificial Intelligence which may eventually lead to his remaining in the world of academia although one can earn much more working in the private sector "but you generally have more research freedom in academia, so I guess one has to sacrifice some money for principles."