Wearable Eye Tracker in Development Incorporates RFID
Over the last year or two, we’ve seen several wearable eye trackers emerge in effort to mitigate the limitations of monitor mounted systems. I was contacted by Peter Stevrin, who shared exciting news about another wearable eye tracker being developed by his team. The team consists of a microcamera vendor, researchers from the Image and Perception Lab, as well as researchers from the ITUniversity in Copenhagen – ITU gaze group. While still in the infant stages of development, the project is promising and has a unique element that I haven’t seen in any other wearable device, RFID.
The working title of the eye tracker is the PicoEye, and it features binocular eye tracking and a forward facing scene camera. The lightweight device is wireless, which gives it the capability of “total mobility.” This is nothing we haven’t seen before, but what makes this device unique is the incorporation of RFID technology. The eye frames hold 2 small RFID tags. If there is an RFID sender/receiver in the building where the user is located, you can determine exactly where the user is. Now, why would you want that feature in an eye tracker? I asked myself the same question. The application they have in mind is actually quite clever.
Stevrin explained that this eye tracker could be used in a museum to create an enhanced visitor experience. The visitors could receive educational audio recordings about the exact object they are looking at when PicoEye is used in combination with a pair of headphones. The eye tracker could detect where the visitor is in the museum and at which object they are looking and play the appropriate recording through the headphones. Because the PicoEye is wireless, visitors could move about the museum freely and engage with objects with their gaze.
There are several advantages to a wearable eye tracker mentioned by Stevrin. The proximity of the microcameras to the eye enables a more exact measurement of the size and form of the pupil than remote systems. In addition, mobility is another feature he mentioned: “We think that total
mobility for an eye tracker will have a lot of advantages compared to remote and monitor mounted systems. Mobility gives flexibility.”
Stevrin anticipates a working prototype to be completed in mid October. The image above is only a conceptual prototype of what the future device may look like. It’s always great to hear about emerging eye tracking technologies, and it will be interesting to watch this project grow from the ground up.
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