Looking for opportunities

Healthcare, PC, and gaming are some of the early adopters who have turned to eye tracking to develop their next-gen, innovative products.

A catalyst for innovation

In simple terms, eye tracking determines what a user is looking at; what their intention is. Together with other biometrics, this intelligence becomes a catalyst for innovation, a way to enhance user experiences, a way to develop new services, industries, products, and markets.

Some examples of existing industries and their eye tracking applications, include:

Personal computing—security and well-being
Virtual and augmented reality—data-enhanced experiences
Gaming—learn from the pros with highlighted streaming
Assistive technology—helping people communicate
Healthcare—early detection of conditions and diseases and data-driven treatment
Industrial—remote collaboration, live expert assistance, and automated reporting.

Personal computing

The evolution of smart, user-aware machines and devices has created a demand for applications that enhance the user experience.

This market segment is developing with emerging solutions addressing the humanization of person-computer interaction. Finding ways to interact in a more convenient manner, with support for optimized power consumption, and ways to uphold privacy.

Tobii Aware, for example, is a PC solution that detects presence, attention, intent and even user identity, helping employees to effortlessly uphold security policies. For more information, go to:

VR and AR

This market segment has many names, including eXtended-, cross-, any-, or mixed-reality. Whatever your preference, VR and AR applications utilize sensor technology to enhance the range of experiences from virtual to augmented reality and everything in between.

The addition of gaze data to digital experiences helps communication to feel normal. Consider, for example, an application that provides potential recipes for an item you are looking at on a supermarket shelf. Or one that enables your avatar to appear to look at other people in a mixed-reality meeting. These scenarios are made possible through eye tracking.

For more information about eye tracking in virtual and augmented reality, go to:

Gaming

Streamers, competitive eSports players, and gamers worldwide are catching on to the possibilities eye tracking enables, and how it can intensify the gaming experiences for both gamers and spectators.

Eye tracking, for example, enables streamers to improve engagement with their followers. The capability to highlight what a gamer is looking at during play provides the audience with a better understanding of intent, making it easier to follow the sequence of play and the skill involved.

Because eye tracking gathers additional data about gameplay independent of the game, new analytics, such as a gaze heatmap, can help gamers to reach a deeper understanding of their performance.

Tobii delivers PC gaming peripherals for high-performance eye tracking. For eye tracking dedicated to gaming, go to:

Healthcare

Due to the significance of eye movement patterns in medical research, eye tracking has an important role to play in the detection and even treatment of some of the world’s most prevalent diseases.

The healthcare industry has been a pioneer in the adoption of eye tracking technology. Embedding eye tracking in medical equipment has, for example, shown to deliver early and unbiased detection of disease symptoms. It can help to make machinery safer to operate, ensure resource-efficiency, and improve working conditions for medical staff. Significantly, eye tracking enables innovative solutions that improve quality-of-life and patient outcomes.

Some of the applications of eye tracking technology in healthcare, include:

Assessment of human conditions, such as traumatic brain injury, reading issues, and vision impairment
Use of patient eye patterns to detect the onset of Parkinson’s disease
Detection and treatment of lazy eye in children
Use of gaze to control the taking of X-Rays during surgery; delivering resource efficiency and reducing the risk of exposure for patients and staff
Use of gaze as an additional input control during remote surgery, improving ergonomics and wellbeing for staff
Reuse of gaze data collected during a procedure to enhance training and simulation.

Industrial

The need for safe working environments and efficient production has resulted in a seismic shift in the use of technology in industry.

Much of the innovation in industry has focused on automation and the ability to perform remote tasks. Vehicle production, for example, has spearheaded the development of robot-controlled assembly lines. The remote machines of the mining industry are made possible through a combination of haptic control, 5G, and sensor technologies. Generally, the outcome is reduced need for people to work in hazardous environments and less repetitive monotonous movements all while maintaining or improving efficiency.

Embedded eye tracking in industrial VR/AR headsets enhances operations in a number of ways. During troubleshooting or repair, field engineers, for example, can use their eyes as an additional input device, to control equipment or access manuals and tutorials. Primed with the information about what the field engineer is looking at, eye tracking makes the possibility of remote, live assistance real.