Old News But Relevant News: Apple and Eye Tracking

This is old news by now, but considering that the January article deals with news from a few years ago, it’s sort of a moot point.

Continuing with our regular Apple and iPhone updates, especially considering recent news of Apple’s new patents for biometric and cardio sensors in their iPhone, we thought we’d note that The Apple Insider posted an article a while back focusing on eye tracking patents Apple originally filed all the way back in 2007.

Apple was apparently researching what they were calling “gaze vector fusion,” where operations on a computer screen could be determined by the direction in which person moves their eyes or head. Sounds like eye tracking, doesn’t it?

A relevant and simultaneously complimentary and backhanded post that showed up earlier this year at Recombu discusses Apple’s look into gaze vectors. Gaze vector technology would allow users to navigate using eye tracking and, in fact, this is not the first time Apple has shown interest in eye tracking technology. But they’re apparently serious this time around, as they even purchased a few units from Tobii, the Swedish eye tracking firm.

The article goes on to call eye tracking a “hobbyist niche” at the moment (honestly?) that “allows tech users to accurately browse and navigate websites and user interfaces without physically touching the screen, no goggles required.” Of course, we know this isn’t the case, and the eye tracking industry is a robust one at that, but in the article’s defense, it does make sense where they’re coming from. Recombu was trying to illustrate the point that Apple typically takes what might be perceived at “niche” corners of the market and expands them into the mainstream. Apple’s trick is to take technologies like these out of their smaller – albeit, established – worlds and introduce them to newbies. It’s a pretty wonderful business model if you think about it, and obviously one that’s been successful for them.

In any case, we didn’t get any proprietary eye tracking abilities from Apple with their introduction of the iPad last month, but they still have the patent, so you never know. Maybe we’ll see something novel come out of the next generation iPhone. In the meantime, fingers crossed.

Is Apple about to open a can of eye-tracking?

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