Gaze-Tracking Display System for Secure Visual Content
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional display systems fail to securely and privately display sensitive information, as they do not protect against visual eavesdropping, despite measures like password security and data encryption, which do not prevent unauthorized viewers from reading displayed content or collecting electromagnetic emanations.
Innovation Solution
A computer-controlled display system that uses a gazetracker to determine the viewer's gaze point, allowing secure content to be displayed only within a defined region intelligible to the authorized viewer while rendering it unintelligible outside this region, employing distracter images and disrupter techniques during saccades to enhance security.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional display systems are used to show sensitive information, then the information is clearly visible to the authorized user, but unauthorized users can also read the content through visual eavesdropping
Solution Approach 1:
The display system applies different visual properties to different spatial regions. The content appears intelligible only within a specific viewing zone (foveal region) and becomes unintelligible outside this zone (peripheral region), creating local quality variation that prevents eavesdropping while maintaining readability for the authorized user
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts the display content based on the user's gaze position. As the user moves their eyes across the display, the intelligible region moves with the gaze point, while other regions remain obscured. This dynamic adaptation ensures continuous security without compromising user access to information
2Reliability
If gaze-tracking technology is implemented to create secure display regions, then visual eavesdropping is prevented, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses the user's own physiological responses (natural eye movements and saccades) as the security mechanism. No additional authentication devices or complex verification systems are needed - the gaze-tracking itself provides the security function, making the system self-sufficient and reducing overall complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a software layer that acts as an intermediary between the display hardware and the user's visual system. This software intermediary processes gaze data and dynamically modifies display content, serving as a mediator that enables security without requiring hardware modifications to the display device itself
3Reliability
If the display content is made unintelligible outside the gaze region, then privacy is protected, but the user experience may be degraded
Solution Approach 1:
The intelligible display region dynamically follows the user's gaze point, expanding and contracting as eyes move. This ensures that wherever the user looks, the content remains readable, while only areas outside the current gaze region are obscured. The dynamic nature maintains continuous usability without forcing the user to adjust their viewing behavior
Solution Approach 2:
The system refreshes the display content at regular intervals synchronized with natural eye movements and saccades. During brief saccadic movements when visual perception is temporarily suppressed, the system can update content in previously obscured regions, ensuring continuous intelligibility as the user scans across the display
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and apparatus for displaying visual content on a display such that the content is comprehensible only to an authorized user for a visual display system such as a computer, a television, a video player, a public display system (including but not limited to a movie theater), a mobile phone, an automated teller machine (ATM), voting booths, kiosks, security screening workstations, tactical displays and other systems where information is displayed for viewing.