While Tobii has a peripheral that brings eye tracking to Windows PCs of all sorts, there’s little doubt that an integrated approach would be more elegant. The company agrees: it’s partnering with Synaptics on a concept Ultrabook (seen above) that combines both Gaze UI and Synaptics’ pressure-sensitive ForcePad in a showcase of new input methods. The partners haven’t said just what new tricks they’ll demonstrate, if any, but it’s clear that there won’t be a size penalty when the concept is as slim as the laptops in stores today. Synaptics and Tobii plan to tour the PC throughout the industry during the summer and the fall, and they’re no doubt hoping that a few vendors use the concept as inspiration.
You will gaze at your computer, and your computer will gaze back. That’s the inevitable path of progress in interface design, as evidenced by ongoing projects from companies like Leap Motion, Umoove, pmdtechnologies and more. Now, Sweden’s Tobii Technology is taking a step forward with its own approach, via a prototype ultrabook design created in partnership with touchpad company Synaptics.
The notebook will incorporate Tobii’s eye-tracking tech with Synpatics’ touch sensitive input methods to preview how the two can be used together to further the cause of new input methods. The purpose of the project is to showcase to OEMs how they might be able to use the same tech in their own products. Tobii and Synaptics will be touring with a roadshow of the prototype devices throughout July and August, showing off exactly how the two technologies work in tandem.
For Tobii, which has been showing off its Tobii Gaze technology since its introduction last year (and which was in development for many years before that in some form or another), this is a chance to finally start getting eye-tracking built-in to more mainstream devices. There’s been a lot of attention paid to how gaze tracking is a part of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 device, and other startups like Umoove are trying to market their own products to other consumer electronics makers, so the time is right for a major sales push.
Partnering with Synaptics is a good way to hitch Tobii’s wagon to a player with strong existing relationships with virtually every Windows PC manufacturer, as well as makers of mobile devices. The touchpad company has been in business for a long time, and survived the transition from cruder, simpler pressure-based input mechanisms to the more sensitive capacitive and hybrid systems now in place in most modern devices. Synaptics will be using the prototype to shop around its own ForcePad solution, a new product offering that incorporates per-finger pressure detection into the mix for even greater sensitivity.
The jury’s still out on whether any one company will dominate gaze detection and eye tracking the same way that Synaptics has done for touch-based input on PCs, but clearly Tobii (which raised $21 million from Intel last year) is making a play for the crown.
“We expect consumers will start seeing product options like this one in stores as early as sometime next year,” Tobii VP of Business Development told us via email. This push likely means we’ll see a lot of familiarly named PC makers trot out this kind of tech (or some kind of motion detection) in their prototype products and concepts at CES next year, so keep an eye out for that, and for the Tobii name.
It was at CES earlier when we dropped by to see what Tobii had in store with Tobii REX, and here we are a few months down the road with yet another solution from Tobii that comes in the form of the Tobii UX Live, which is the first eye-tracking solution that was specially developed especially for the web design community. Tobii UX Live will combine hardware, software, education and support, allowing interactive designers and developers to be in possession of a fast, easy-to-use, and affordable tool that enables them to integrate powerful, real-time eye tracking insights into their work.
How does it assist developers and designers? It allows one to gain Critical View, where eye tracking technology is now honed to make it possible to see just exactly what the user is looking at, or vice versa, whenever one navigates a site. It also helps improve designs of a page, since it can home in on what meets the users’ needs in real time, so this might just see more user friendly sites down the road as well.
The Tobii UX Live solution will come with a Tobii X2 Eye Tracker, the Tobii Studio Live Edition, as well as relevant training and support to get you started.
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One of the neat things about CES is that it gives us a chance to check in with startups we covered the previous year. In the case of, Tobii, 12 months makes a world of difference. When we met with the company last January, it had never publicly shown off its eye-tracking Gaze UI, which allowed us to navigate, zoom, select and scroll on a custom Windows 8 laptop with just our pupils and a touchpad. After playing with it, it was obvious to us the technology still needed some fine-tuning, but nonetheless Tobii promised it would have a product to sell in about a year’s time.
Fast forward 12 months: Intel now owns a 10 percent stake in the company, and Tobii recently started shipping its first piece of hardware, the REX. This small USB peripheral, just slightly thicker than a pen, attaches to the base of any computer display, allowing it to bring eye-tracking technology to any Windows 8 machine. For now, it’s only available to developers for a price of $995, but Tobii expects to ship 5,000 consumer units by the end of 2013. Happily for us, though, we got to play with it here at CES 2013. Meet us after the break to see how the technology’s grown up since we tried it out it a year ago, and stay tuned for a demo video!
Tobii has been teasing its ability to track a users’ eye movements in order to use their computer for quite some time, but it has yet to make its device available to the general public. This is about to change as the company is announcing it will be selling its REX device to developers starting next week and will be made widely available in the second half of 2013.
“This is a natural step for us. We have been working on products for niche markets for many years, but the ultimate goal has always been to develop our technology so it can be added to any computer, and a peripheral is the easiest way to do that,” said Sara Hyléen, marketing director at Tobii.
The REX will be a peripheral that will attach itself to the computer’s display and keeps track of the user’s eye movements with two specially built optical sensors. At CES next week, Tobii will be demonstrating its technology as we’ll be able to see users select, scroll, zoom and navigate their computer simply by using their eyes.
Tobii may not be a household brand name yet, but that doesn’t make the company’s eye-tracking technology any less impressive. At last year’s CES we got an opportunity to preview Gaze UI, an interface that allowed us to navigate, zoom, select and scroll on a proprietary Windows 8-enabled laptop with just our pupils and a touchpad; this year, Tobii is introducing the REX, a USB-connected peripheral that adds these features to any Windows 8 PC. The device, slightly larger than a pen, adheres to the base of any PC monitor and can be integrated with other existing controls such as the keyboard, mouse or touchpad. Though this may sound quite similar to the PCEye launched in 2011, it’s different in that the REX isn’t intended for use as an assistive technology, so you’ll still need to keep that mouse and trackpad around. Consumer pricing and availability haven’t been announced, but Tobii plans to offer 5,000 units to consumers before the end of 2013; for developers, however, a special edition (seen above) should be available starting today for $995.
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It was at CES earlier when we dropped by to see what Tobii had in store with 
