Eye control innovator Tobii introduced and demonstrated its latest eye control technology at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Gaze interface for Windows 8 is said to take advantage of the operating system's large tile layout to offer users a superior interaction experience, that neither touch nor mouse alone can provide.
Gaze hasn't been designed to be totally hands-free like the company's EyeAsteroids game we brought you last November, or even the earlier prototype laptop created with Lenovo. The system uses a combination of eye control for pointing and touch pad confirmation of commands for fine tuning. The interface is said to be at least as precise as using a mouse to move a cursor around, but much quicker.
A user can activate an onscreen app or shortcut by looking at the Metro tile icon and then using the trackpad for more precise control of the onscreen cursor - to activate smaller icons like links on a web page, for instance, without huge sausage fingers getting in the way and blocking the view as is often the case on a touchscreen. Tobii says that Gaze users can enable all seven primary touch commands in Windows 8, including activate, select, zoom, and scroll.
The Gaze interface seems to hold great potential for faster gaming, precision onscreen graphics manipulation, and more intuitive document browsing. Tobii says that it could also be useful for manipulating medical imaging technology used in surgery and diagnostics.
See what you think after watching Tobii's Anders Olsson outline the technology in the following video: