10 ms·

Tobii and SteelSeries Release Consumer Eye Tracker

30 points by pjf 12y ago

pjf 12y ago
Tobii made the EyeX Dev Kit available for 95 USD at http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/buy/ http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/buy/
rdw 12y ago
I have an EyeX. The eye tracking is very effective -- spookily so. Imprecise but low-latency, which is the right tradeoff to make. It can be faster than mousing, if the UI is set up just right. The main limitations that keep me from using it: - Mac is not supported. - Very small active area. You basically have to keep your head within about a 2x2 foot cube. You can't lean back, on an armrest, or even slump.
- listic 12y ago
  What is the difference between EyeX and 'SteelSeries Sentry Gaming Eye Tracker' described in an article? Can you enlarge your active area by moving the monitor further away from your head? I guess Linux is not supported, too?
  - unwind 12y ago
    For Linux they seem to be recommending the "Tobii REX" at a comfortable $795. Ouch. :(
    - kefka 12y ago
      And it's not even that good. We had a Rex. We gave it away. Read my post above. It gives better detail of our trials and our result.
      - listic 12y ago
        ok, so now there's an EyeX, Rex and this newest 'SteelSeries Sentry Gaming Eye Tracker'. What's the difference? What's the point in releasing this newer thingy which is more expensive than EyeX, which I now see was available for arounf a year?
        kefka 12y ago
        It appears they added an extra IR eye scanner module, increasing accuracy. And they're focusing on 'sell to money-is-water gamers'. I'd wait. The zone of gaze tracking is still too small, and it's still hardware in need of a killer app.
  - rdw 12y ago
    It has a depth limit, as well. It's truly a 2x2x2 cube. In my current setup, I can lean forward quite a bit, till the monitor is a little too close for comfort, but I cannot lean back at all. In playing with it, I've noticed that there's sometimes a bit of latency in the edge detection; I'll lean back, do some eye-ing for a second or two and then all of a sudden it cuts off. It gives me the impression that they're not actually enforcing a cube per se, but that their technique has increasing error rates outside of a sweet spot, and they have an errors-over-time cutoff. I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties in the implementation. The eye moves only a tiny amount, so you need a high-resolution camera to detect where it's looking with any accuracy (this is why they require USB 3). If the camera is already pushing the limits of inexpensive consumer camera technology, you can't easily expand its field of view without compromising accuracy. Here's a paper that talks briefly about the technology: http://www.tobii.com/eye-tracking-research/global/library/white-papers/tobii-eye-tracking-white-paper/ http://www.tobii.com/eye-tracking-research/global/library/wh...
n1c 12y ago
I wonder if 'fixations per minute' will become the new APM.
im2w1l 12y ago
This is super cool technology. However I worry how advertisers may use this.
- innguest 12y ago
  Advertisers will use this to try and sell you more targeted products, so their advertising costs go down and they can be profitable longer, improve their products, sell more, etc. You should worry about how governments will use this data.
kefka 12y ago
At my workplace, we obtained a Tobii Rex for dev and investigation. After both my supervisor and I took a good long crack at it, we could think of very few ways it could be used. Of course, eye tracking has traditionally been used in the medical disabled industry, for good reason. But when it comes to "What can it be used for in a university setting", we came up with a blank. rdw is correct about the eyeX, and it also applies to the Rex: the operational area is around 2 foot cube. If you move your eyes out of that, the driver/SDK throws a tantrum and desyncs your gaze. This also means having an interactive demo is nigh impossible, as the gaze tracker has to be within a small area of the head/eyes. And you better not blink, as it cannot track an eye. It has to have both eyes available. Im not entirely sure why they didn't implement tracking with each eye independently, but that's what they did. Calibration is also a pain. You have to calibrate the device stick to the monitor (not hard), and then you have to follow your gaze around the screen to the little dots for calibration. With this calibration, it changed significantly from morning to evening to the point I had to be a different user. I also found their SDK and accompanying demo software to be completely lackluster. Every demo required keyboard button presses. Not only that, but their program in the control panel had no hands-free options; just mostly hands free. There was no completely hands-free app to control parts or the whole computer. This is one of the reasons we thought this might be interesting. The other issue is of accuracy: what the hardware is doing is sending out tons of 'gaze detection events' that raytrace where the device thinks you're looking. When you're in the calibration, you can see this by the dozens of dots around the 'focus dot'. These are the ray-traces that attempt to figure out your gaze. And it's not great. Some dots in the middle (think + on the screen) were fine. But the dots on the 4 corners of the screen would routinely come in as scattered clouds that would "kind of, not really" synchronize. And we'd have to go back through the calibration because accuracy really stunk. In the end, our dept gave our Tobii Rex to the Disability office of the Chancellor. We both hoped they could tease out better performance and usability than we could.
- mtrimpe 12y ago
  I had a somewhat similar experience with EyeTribe, their main competitor (bigger area, lower accuracy, not sure about single eye tracking.) One use-case I did see however was 'focus follows gaze' which seams at least could be fairly valuable. If I wasn't on OS X (where the windowing system doesn't allow for that) I'd love to have given that a try...
emsy 12y ago
If the precision is sufficient, it could be used to counter RSI. Also, I think for gaming it could serve as a third, passive input element.
- mtrimpe 12y ago
  That's what I gave it a try for and as I mentioned in my other comment the only thing it's accuracy would work for at the moment is focus-follows-gaze. It could work very well when combined with speech recognition and broad 'focus-targets,' but that will/would require a lot of changes to existing software.
ersii 12y ago
Let me just say that Tobii seems like a pretty awesome company. They're a Swedish start-up (maybe they're past that now) that has, if I recall correctly now released their first consumer product. Previously they were mostly into doing usability studies and such in pretty closed environments (which is probably why their other equipment and dev-kits are so heavily priced). I've had the chance to talk to a few Tobii-engineers in Stockholm at a few general gatherings and like I previously said, Tobii seems to be a pretty interesting company. I've heard that Tobii Technologies is going to launch an Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Stock Exchange sometime under 2015, although official time plans are not available. Investor AB owns about 20% and Intel owns about 10% of Tobii Technologies.
ccozan 12y ago
This technology could be really useful in a car. Tracking eyes either could make driving more safe by detecting if I am really aware and watching the traffic or traffic signs ( "you have overlooked the 30kmh sign") or maybe more informative, and combined with a HUD to give me information about the objects I am looking at ( fun facts about the car in front of me, or what PoI / Mountain I am looking at, etc )
Terr_ 12y ago
Forget just using it to control games, cheap/fast/accurate gaze-tracking has huge potential when it comes to passive analysis: 1. Performance! You only need to render high-quality pixels in the places where the user is (or will) look. Lower-quality content can be put into their peripheral vision and they won't notice. 2. Depth-of-field effects will actually be good instead of a pain in the ass, because the "focal distance" is more likely to be whatever the user is actually looking at. (Not perfect, though: Is the user looking at the semitransparent steam-puffs 5m away or the wall 100m behind?) 3. High dynamic range can behave and adjust appropriately since the system knows whether you're gazing into a light or dark area. Current systems either take the entire scene into account (bad) or weigh things towards the crosshair (a bit better) which might not be where the user is actually trying to look.
Brythcalom 12y ago
Cant really get enough of these kinds of games huh? We used to have just joysticks, now we have these.

30 points by pjf 12y ago

pjf 12y ago

Tobii made the EyeX Dev Kit available for 95 USD at http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/buy/ http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/buy/

rdw 12y ago

I have an EyeX. The eye tracking is very effective -- spookily so. Imprecise but low-latency, which is the right tradeoff to make. It can be faster than mousing, if the UI is set up just right. The main limitations that keep me from using it: - Mac is not supported. - Very small active area. You basically have to keep your head within about a 2x2 foot cube. You can't lean back, on an armrest, or even slump.

listic 12y ago
What is the difference between EyeX and 'SteelSeries Sentry Gaming Eye Tracker' described in an article? Can you enlarge your active area by moving the monitor further away from your head? I guess Linux is not supported, too?
- unwind 12y ago
  For Linux they seem to be recommending the "Tobii REX" at a comfortable $795. Ouch. :(
  - kefka 12y ago
    And it's not even that good. We had a Rex. We gave it away. Read my post above. It gives better detail of our trials and our result.
    - listic 12y ago
      ok, so now there's an EyeX, Rex and this newest 'SteelSeries Sentry Gaming Eye Tracker'. What's the difference? What's the point in releasing this newer thingy which is more expensive than EyeX, which I now see was available for arounf a year?
      - kefka 12y ago
        It appears they added an extra IR eye scanner module, increasing accuracy. And they're focusing on 'sell to money-is-water gamers'. I'd wait. The zone of gaze tracking is still too small, and it's still hardware in need of a killer app.
- rdw 12y ago
  It has a depth limit, as well. It's truly a 2x2x2 cube. In my current setup, I can lean forward quite a bit, till the monitor is a little too close for comfort, but I cannot lean back at all. In playing with it, I've noticed that there's sometimes a bit of latency in the edge detection; I'll lean back, do some eye-ing for a second or two and then all of a sudden it cuts off. It gives me the impression that they're not actually enforcing a cube per se, but that their technique has increasing error rates outside of a sweet spot, and they have an errors-over-time cutoff. I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties in the implementation. The eye moves only a tiny amount, so you need a high-resolution camera to detect where it's looking with any accuracy (this is why they require USB 3). If the camera is already pushing the limits of inexpensive consumer camera technology, you can't easily expand its field of view without compromising accuracy. Here's a paper that talks briefly about the technology: http://www.tobii.com/eye-tracking-research/global/library/white-papers/tobii-eye-tracking-white-paper/ http://www.tobii.com/eye-tracking-research/global/library/wh...

n1c 12y ago

I wonder if 'fixations per minute' will become the new APM.

im2w1l 12y ago

This is super cool technology. However I worry how advertisers may use this.

innguest 12y ago
Advertisers will use this to try and sell you more targeted products, so their advertising costs go down and they can be profitable longer, improve their products, sell more, etc. You should worry about how governments will use this data.

kefka 12y ago

At my workplace, we obtained a Tobii Rex for dev and investigation. After both my supervisor and I took a good long crack at it, we could think of very few ways it could be used. Of course, eye tracking has traditionally been used in the medical disabled industry, for good reason. But when it comes to "What can it be used for in a university setting", we came up with a blank. rdw is correct about the eyeX, and it also applies to the Rex: the operational area is around 2 foot cube. If you move your eyes out of that, the driver/SDK throws a tantrum and desyncs your gaze. This also means having an interactive demo is nigh impossible, as the gaze tracker has to be within a small area of the head/eyes. And you better not blink, as it cannot track an eye. It has to have both eyes available. Im not entirely sure why they didn't implement tracking with each eye independently, but that's what they did. Calibration is also a pain. You have to calibrate the device stick to the monitor (not hard), and then you have to follow your gaze around the screen to the little dots for calibration. With this calibration, it changed significantly from morning to evening to the point I had to be a different user. I also found their SDK and accompanying demo software to be completely lackluster. Every demo required keyboard button presses. Not only that, but their program in the control panel had no hands-free options; just mostly hands free. There was no completely hands-free app to control parts or the whole computer. This is one of the reasons we thought this might be interesting. The other issue is of accuracy: what the hardware is doing is sending out tons of 'gaze detection events' that raytrace where the device thinks you're looking. When you're in the calibration, you can see this by the dozens of dots around the 'focus dot'. These are the ray-traces that attempt to figure out your gaze. And it's not great. Some dots in the middle (think + on the screen) were fine. But the dots on the 4 corners of the screen would routinely come in as scattered clouds that would "kind of, not really" synchronize. And we'd have to go back through the calibration because accuracy really stunk. In the end, our dept gave our Tobii Rex to the Disability office of the Chancellor. We both hoped they could tease out better performance and usability than we could.

mtrimpe 12y ago
I had a somewhat similar experience with EyeTribe, their main competitor (bigger area, lower accuracy, not sure about single eye tracking.) One use-case I did see however was 'focus follows gaze' which seams at least could be fairly valuable. If I wasn't on OS X (where the windowing system doesn't allow for that) I'd love to have given that a try...

emsy 12y ago

If the precision is sufficient, it could be used to counter RSI. Also, I think for gaming it could serve as a third, passive input element.

mtrimpe 12y ago
That's what I gave it a try for and as I mentioned in my other comment the only thing it's accuracy would work for at the moment is focus-follows-gaze. It could work very well when combined with speech recognition and broad 'focus-targets,' but that will/would require a lot of changes to existing software.

ersii 12y ago

Let me just say that Tobii seems like a pretty awesome company. They're a Swedish start-up (maybe they're past that now) that has, if I recall correctly now released their first consumer product. Previously they were mostly into doing usability studies and such in pretty closed environments (which is probably why their other equipment and dev-kits are so heavily priced). I've had the chance to talk to a few Tobii-engineers in Stockholm at a few general gatherings and like I previously said, Tobii seems to be a pretty interesting company. I've heard that Tobii Technologies is going to launch an Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Stock Exchange sometime under 2015, although official time plans are not available. Investor AB owns about 20% and Intel owns about 10% of Tobii Technologies.

ccozan 12y ago

This technology could be really useful in a car. Tracking eyes either could make driving more safe by detecting if I am really aware and watching the traffic or traffic signs ( "you have overlooked the 30kmh sign") or maybe more informative, and combined with a HUD to give me information about the objects I am looking at ( fun facts about the car in front of me, or what PoI / Mountain I am looking at, etc )

Terr_ 12y ago

Forget just using it to control games, cheap/fast/accurate gaze-tracking has huge potential when it comes to passive analysis: 1. Performance! You only need to render high-quality pixels in the places where the user is (or will) look. Lower-quality content can be put into their peripheral vision and they won't notice. 2. Depth-of-field effects will actually be good instead of a pain in the ass, because the "focal distance" is more likely to be whatever the user is actually looking at. (Not perfect, though: Is the user looking at the semitransparent steam-puffs 5m away or the wall 100m behind?) 3. High dynamic range can behave and adjust appropriately since the system knows whether you're gazing into a light or dark area. Current systems either take the entire scene into account (bad) or weigh things towards the crosshair (a bit better) which might not be where the user is actually trying to look.

Brythcalom 12y ago

Cant really get enough of these kinds of games huh? We used to have just joysticks, now we have these.