Eye Gaze & Gesture Control- How Smart Can TVs Get?
With the release of new wave gesture controlled video game consoles like the Sony Move and the Xbox Kinect, we knew it wouldn’t be long until eye gaze entered the playing field. The ability to track gaze and viewing behavior on a computer screen has been around for years now, but doing so on a television screen has never been possible until now. The introduction of Smart TVs has opened up a world of possibilities for eye tracking technologies because new televisions are starting to become more like computers with giant screens. Modern Smart TVs can connect to the internet, stream videos and music, and offer thousands of apps.
A recent press release announced that Mirametrix, a maker of consumer eye gaze technologies, had a successful pilot integration of eye tracking and gesture tracking with a Smart TV. The controls of the TV were modified to enable the user to use gesture controls and eye gaze to test a few different applications, like choosing movies from a redesigned Netflix menu by swiping through options with the hand and making a selection with the eyes. One of the goals of this experiment is to provide viewers with a more intuitive way to control their Smart TVs to improve the overall user experience.
Not only does eye gaze have the potential to revolutionize interaction with Smart TVs, it may also improve media consumption. By integrating an advertising display and content suggestion engine with the Mirametrix eye tracking analytics suite, they were able to display dynamic ad content that changed according to viewer preferences or gaze behavior. For example, the system was able to recognize that one viewer focused her eyes on the logo of a laptop that was being used by a character in a TV show. Using this information on visual attention, the content engine opted to show a laptop commercial during the break. This kind of highly targeted advertisement could be a very valuable tool for marketers and ad designers.
Mirametrixs is on the track to something big. As they streamline the integration of all these technologies, I think we will see an evolution in the way we interact with and consume content on Smart TVs.
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