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February 14, 2012

   

Look, Ma, No Hands!    

Operating a Laptop With Eyes Only  


At the International Consumer Electronics Show a couple of weeks ago, I'd heard buzz about a company called Tobii, which was demonstrating a laptop with built-in eye-tracking software. (That's Tobii, "with two eyes," get it?) 
 
Now eye tracking isn't new. It is available, at huge cost, in the military, in specialized industries, for disabled people, and so on. But it's one thing to pay millions for a heads-up display in a fighter jet, and quite another to have it on your laptop. 
 
I found the company's booth out in the deepest reaches of C.E.S.'s 37-football-fields-big exhibition halls.-.the Siberia of tiny booths from companies without a lot of money to spend. The entire booth was pretty much one laptop and one desktop PC. 
 
A representative helped me through the demo on the laptop. First, the system finds and learns where your eyes are by using a 10-second calibration procedure, in which you simply look at an orange dot as it jumps to four positions around the screen. Then you're ready. 
 
The first demonstration was an Asteroids game, in which you're supposed to blow up incoming asteroids just by looking at them. You discover that Tobii's system works perfectly, flawlessly, exhilaratingly. Your hands are free, your body is relaxed, and you're blowing up space rocks instantly with nothing but the awesome power of your gaze. 
 
Click here to read the complete article by David Pogue, the Times' Technology Columnist, published January 26, 2012 on the New York Times website. 
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