Tobii, the specialist in gaze recognition and eye tracking, was in the Sands and was showing off its latest design win – a new notebook (MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Tobii) for game players that integrates the latest version of the Tobii eye tracking system. (Tobii Presents First Integrated Eye Tracking) The new PC will start shipping in Q1 2016. The new version is smaller than the previous one as it uses a new ASIC from the firm and sits below the display. The firm was demonstrating the use of the eye tracking in the Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed Syndicate game, which includes support for eye tracking.
As well as game play, Tobii was showing that its gaze system can be used not only for mouse replacement, but can also be used to identify the user and allow automatic login as well as a more sophisticated “presence sensor” in Windows 10.
Tobii told us that adding gaze would typically increase the system cost by around $150.
Analyst Comment
I’ve been doing some tests of the Tobii gaze system over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, at the current state of the technology, the system won’t accurately track my eyes over my dual screens, or the full size of my 32″ display as I sit quite close. If I sit further back, the system improves, but at my most comfortable distance, the tracking gets inaccurate or lost in the top part of the display. This could be fixed by using more sensors at the top of the display as well as the bottom, but this adds a need for more processing as well as more sensor cost.
At the time of publishing, we were working on an edit of a video interview we conducted at CES. Watch our video page on the home page for a link. (BR)
