Devices capable of tracking the user’s gaze have become significantly more affordable over the past few years, thus broadening their application, including in-home and office computers and various customer service equipment. Although such devices have comparatively low operating frequencies and limited resolution, they are sufficient to supplement or replace classic input interfaces, such as the keyboard and mouse. The biometric application we researched verifies a user’s identity based on parameters acquired with a low-cost eye tracker. The use of the eye-tracking device in bank booths has many advantages, including the fact that eye trackers are contactless devices, which, especially in the light of the Covid pandemic, has increasing importance, in addition to providing a solution for confirming the liveness of the user. This paper describes an experiment in which 20 features extracted from eye movement data related mainly to saccades and fixations are used as a complementary biometric modality to authenticate clients at banking kiosks. Data were collected from 39 subjects while operating a banking system using engineered biometric kiosk prototypes. Authentication performance employing eye-movement tracking and parameterizing was compared for two classifiers: Support Vector Machine (SVM) and extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). The results showed that the XGBoost-based classifier outperformed the SVM-based one regarding equal error rates (6.76% to 8% vs. 16.21 to 18.78%). Similar differences were obtained for true acceptance rates at different false acceptance rates (0.1 and 0.01), where the SVM-based classifier achieved a maximum of 81.08% and the XGBoost-based achieved 98.65%. Finally, prospects for the broader application of eye movement tracking as a biometric modality are discussed.

Pre-trained models have become widely adopted for their strong zero-shot performance, often minimizing the need for task-specific data. However, specialized domains like medical speech recognition still benefit from tailored datasets. We present ADMEDVOICE, a novel Polish medical speech dataset, collected using a high-quality text corpus and diverse recording conditions to reflect real-world scenarios. The dataset includes domain-specific vocabulary such as drug names and illnesses, with nearly 15 hours of audio from 28 speakers, including noisy environments. Additionally, we release two enhanced versions: one anonymized for privacy-sensitive use and another synthetic version created via text-to-speech, totaling over 83 hours and nearly 50,000 samples. Evaluating the Whisper model, we observe a 24.03 WER on our test set. Fine-tuning with human recordings reduces WER to 15.47, and incorporating anonymized and synthetic data further lowers it to 13.91. We open-source the dataset, fine-tuned model, and code on Kaggle to support continued research in medical speech recognition.

The paper aims to discuss a case study of sensing analytics and technology in acoustics when applied to reverberation conditions. Reverberation is one of the issues that makes speech in indoor spaces challenging to understand. This problem is particularly critical in large spaces with few absorbing or diffusing surfaces. One of the natural remedies to improve speech intelligibility in such conditions may be achieved through speaking slowly. It is possible to use algorithms that reduce the rate of speech (RoS) in real time. Therefore, the study aims to find recommended values of RoS in the context of STI (speech transmission index) in different acoustic environments. In the experiments, speech intelligibility for six impulse responses recorded in spaces with different STIs is investigated using a sentence test (for the Polish language). Fifteen subjects with normal hearing participated in these tests. The results of the analytical analysis enabled us to propose a curve specifying the maximum RoS values translating into understandable speech under given acoustic conditions. This curve can be used in speech processing control technology as well as compressive reverse acoustic sensing.

The aim of the paper was to compare acoustic field around the open and stopped organ pipes. The wooden organ pipe was located in the anechoic chamber and activated with a constant air flow, produced by an external air-compressor. Thus, a long-term steady state response was possible to obtain. Multi-channel acoustic vector sensor was used to measure the sound intensity distribution of radiated acoustic energy. Measurements have been carried out on a defined fixed grid of points. A specialized Cartesian robot allowed for a precise positioning of the acoustic probe. The resulted data were processed in order to obtain and visualize the sound intensity distribution around the pipe, taking into account the type of the organ pipe, frequency of the generated sound, the sound pressure level and the direction of acoustic energy propagation. For the open pipe, an additional sound source was identified at the top of the pipe. In this case, the streamlines in front of the pipe are propagated horizontally and in a greater distance than in a case of the stopped pipe, moreover they are directed downwards. For the stopped pipe, the streamlines of the acoustic flow were directed upwards. The results for both pipe types were compared and discussed in the paper.

Modern eye tracking technology provides a means for communication with patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DoC) or remaining in locked-in-state. However, being able to use an eye tracker for controlling text-based contents by such patients requires preserved reading ability in the first place. To our knowledge, this aspect, although of great social importance, so far has seemed to be neglected. In the paper, we presented the possibility of using an eye-tracking technology for assessing reading comprehension skills in post-comatose patients with minimal consciousness. We prepared various syllable-, word- and sentence-based tasks, controlled by gaze, used for assessing the reading comprehension skills. The obtained results showed that people with minimal consciousness preserved the reading comprehension skills, in most cases to a high extent, but had difficulties with recognizing errors in the written text. The ability to maintain attention during performing the tasks was in statistically significant correlation with motivation, and that one was in a statistically significant correlation with the reading ability. The results indicate that post-comatose patients with minimal consciousness can read words and sentences, hence some useful hints may be provided for the development of gaze tracking-based human-computer interfaces for these people.

The aim of this paper is three-fold. First, the basics of binaural and ambisonic techniques are briefly presented. Then, details related to audio-visual recordings of a remote performance of the Academic Choir of the Gdansk University of Technology are shown. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, artists had a choice, namely, to stay at home and not perform or stay at home and perform. In fact, staying at home brought in the possibility of creating and developing art at home while working online. During the first months of lock-down, the audience was satisfied with music performances that were fairly far from the typical experience of a real concert hall. Then, more advanced technology was brought to facilitate joint rehearsal and performance of better quality, including multichannel sound and spatialization. At the same time, spatial music productions benefited from the disadvantage of remote rehearsal by creating immersive experiences for the audience based on ambisonic and binaural techniques. Finally, subjective tests were prepared and performed to observe performers’ attention behavior divided between the conductor and music notation in the network-like environment. To this end, eye-tracking technology was employed. This aspect is related to the quality of experience (QoE), which in the performance area–and especially in remote mode–is essential.