The Insper scholarship student João Lucas Cadorniga had to step out of his comfort zone during the two months he spent in the summer research program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the United States. A student in the sixth semester of Computer Science, he was guided by Professor Elahe Soltanaghai in a language processing research project for gaze typing that involves virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence, and algorithms.

 

To begin with, this was Cadorniga's first trip outside Brazil, which would be enough to fill his eyes with new landscapes and cultural diversities. But some technologies involved in the research project were also new to him. “I had never worked with virtual and augmented reality and the field of human-computer interaction,” he says. “It was very interesting to put into practice one of Insper’s mottos, which is ‘learning to learn,’ and use this kind of knowledge and attitude to adapt to an environment different from what I was used to.”

 

Back in São Paulo, Cadorniga continues to help with the gaze typing research, without the use of hands, through a virtual keyboard. It is a technology still under development with definite application for aiding people with disabilities, but which can expand to various activities following the trail of VR and AR glasses and the internet of things. The work is carried out in iSens, the wireless systems lab where Professor Elahe develops wireless sensing projects.

 

Technically, an infrared detector can capture 60 points per second of a person’s gaze toward the virtual keyboard, but there is still inaccuracy because the eyes scan other keys in fractions of seconds while searching for certain letters. The work involves programming the algorithm that, from all the points sampled during the typing of the word, maps the keys most likely observed and lists the candidate words. A process similar to sliding a finger over the virtual keyboard of smartphones and tablets. “It’s heavy programming work, but the cool thing is that the group shares the concern that everything should be intuitive and pleasant for the user,” says Cadorniga.

 

In this learning process, the contribution of Professor Andrew Kurauchi, from the Insper Computer Science program, who researches human-computer interaction technologies, including eye trackers, was valuable. “Andrew has a very well-cited scientific paper on gaze gesture typing and helped me learn more about this field,” says Cadorniga. “Despite being a very niche topic, there has been research for over 40 years and a clear evolution to show which path we should follow to improve the algorithm.”

 

The goal is ambitious: to reach speeds close to finger typing. In the coming months, the team intends to write a scientific paper to submit to a congress in Japan, presenting the research contributions and user test results. It will be a remarkable experience if everything goes well, says Cadorniga: “Entering the project, developing, finishing, and still getting it accepted in a major conference in the field will turn into a feeling of accomplished work.”

 

The memories of the summer program have not waned, as demonstrated by the University of Illinois sweatshirt Cadorniga wore on the day of this interview. "The Illinois program was essential in opening my mind to the possibilities we have, especially with Insper, of reaching different levels even outside the country," states the student. "Just being there, taking on a cool project, I was able to work a lot, meet people, and cultivate the idea of an M.Sc. in Illinois which opens many doors for us."

 

Among the people he interacted with in the United States, besides Americans and the other seven Insper students sent to the summer program, Cadorniga met students and researchers from China, South Korea, Singapore, India, Mexico, and Ecuador. "We had contact with people from different cultures, with a strong sense of unity, which helped a lot to make us feel at home during those two months," he says. "And the infrastructure was something from another planet, because it’s a small town where almost everything revolves around the university."

 

The metropolitan area of Champaign-Urbana has about 235,000 residents. Only at the local university, there are 56,000 undergraduate and graduate students. A very unusual scenario for someone who has always lived in São Paulo, with its 11.5 million inhabitants. "From the airplane window, as we approached the city's airport, we looked out and only saw cornfields, corn everywhere," he recalls. "I thought I would have trouble adapting to the environment. I don't know if peaceful is the word, but it definitely had a less chaotic energy than São Paulo."

 

Cadorniga continues: "It was summer vacation there, so the campus was relatively empty. During the semester it's full of students, but during the vacation people go back home, go to work, do internships elsewhere. Even so, there were many things to do in the city. There were restaurants of different cultures, for example. The research program staff went for a day in Chicago, and with two other Brazilian classmates, I spent a weekend in a hostel. Chicago is more like São Paulo, that crazy rush. But it was cool to explore so many differences."

 

On one of his Sunday walks around the university campus, after lunch, he entered the Spurlock ethnographic museum and came across a collection of artifacts that record the history of humanity on six continents since prehistory. "It wasn't a very large museum, but it was on campus and worth it as one of those breaks that calm the tense moments of the research project, besides having some interesting coffee shops on the way," he says. After all, sight was just one of the five senses Cadorniga could sharpen during the study trip.