We’ve already got touchscreen and voice control on our mobile devices but a group from Copenhagen is working on the next breakthrough – eye control.
The Eye Tribe was founded by group of four former PhD students and has received more than $1 million in seed funding with the goal of bringing eye control to the mass market.
The group had a stand at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show to showcase the technology as well as selling a development kit in the hope of creating more apps and awareness about the project.
The development kit consists of a sensor that works with a Windows PC or tablet.
To demonstrate how it works, Eye Tribe programmed the popular game Fruit Ninja where instead of slicing the flying fruit with your finger you could use your eyes.
Tech Guide took part in this demo and was surprised by the accuracy of the technology.
All we had to do is look at the fruit flying on to the screen to slice it and it worked as quickly as we could move our eyes.
Before we played we performed a short calibration where we had to look at a series of dots around the screen without moving our head.
But the point of the technology is not just to play games handsfree but also to enable the technology to perform a wide variety of functions.
“We believe that the true potential of eye tracking can only be reached once it has become widely available,” says Eye Tribe CEO Sune Alstrop Johansen.
According to Eye Tribe the accuracy of the technology allows the eye tracking to pinpoint an area of the screen less than a centimetre wide.
Apart from general convenience on a smartphone or tablet, the technology would also offer options for in-car use where the driver is usually required by law not to touch or interact with their devices while driving.
It would also empower users who may have a physical handicap that doesn’t allow them to touch or hold a device.
The sensor is about 15cm long but the technology can be easily shrunk down to fit inside a smartphone or tablet according to Eye Tribe as all that’s required is a camera and an infrared light source.
The latest news from Eye Tribe is that the company will now be developing the technology to work on the Android platform with plans to also create a Mac version to offer true hands-free computing.
The technology can also be used to collect eye movement patterns on your website or advertisement to see where you get the strongest engagement.
Eye Tribe’s goal is to licence the software to the major manufacturers of smartphones and tablets – a market now worth more than $250 billion.
It is estimated more than 1.1 billion devices will be sold in 2015.
Samsung’s recent feature called Eye Tracking which was introduced with the Galaxy S3 is, according to Eye Tribe, better described as head tracking because it does not offer the accuracy of pure eye tracking.
* Stephen Fenech travelled to Las Vegas as a guest of LG
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