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2. Could Eye-Tracking Replace Your Mouse? | Upgrade Your Life ...

   news.yahoo.com/.../could-eye-tracking-replace-mouse-181...

   by Becky Worley - in 167,950 Google+ circles - More by Becky Worley 13 hours ago – From the blog Upgrade Your Life: What if you could dramatically speed up your computing by moving your cursor exclusively with your eyes? Could Eye-Tracking Replace Your Mouse? By Becky Worley | Upgrade Your Life – 13 hrs ago Email Share Tweet 0 Print What if you could dramatically speed up your computing by moving your cursor exclusively with your eyes? A company called Tobii is transforming the way we interact with our screens. By using your eyes instead of your mouse, you can select what you’re looking at almost instantaneously. Not only does this speed up a tremendous number of computing tasks, but it has the potential to reduce repetitive stress injuries. But Does It Really Work? Seeing is believing. So I had to test it for myself. I have to admit I was a skeptic. Most gesture and touch controls I’ve tried in the past at the Consumer Electronics Show have been a little clunky. So I was thinking that something as sophisticated as gaze recognition wouldn’t work very well. Boy, was I wrong. After a one-time calibration that took all of 10 seconds, I started looking around the screen. I expected the cursor to go crazy as I scanned from side to side, but the cursor never moved. Instead, as Tobii CEO and Co-Founder Henrik Eskilsson explained to me, the eye-tracking only registers when you hit a function key on the keyboard that they had outfitted with a blue-sticker. As soon as I found a program I wanted to open, I looked at it on the screen and then hit the blue button. Boom - the application opened. No mouse, just eye-controlled.  As I zipped around the computer, I very quickly figured it out: look, blue button. Find an icon, stare at it, hit the blue button. Hit the Windows key on the keyboard to go back to the Windows 8 Home screen of tiles, look for something new, hit the blue button. You get the idea. Navigating the operating system was pretty easy, so then I dug into a web page. Look at a link, hit the blue button, and the link opens.  What surprised me was when I read a long article of text, my gaze didn’t move the page or the cursor at all until I was on the line of text lowest on the page. Just as I was about to reach for the mouse to scroll down, the web page automatically scrolled. “How’d it know to do that?” I asked. Henrik explained that the tracker knows you are reading from the motion of your eyes; as your gaze nears the lower edge of the page, it is set to automatically scroll. I used the calculator and added all by gaze: look at 7, hit the blue button; look at the + sign, hit the blue button, look at 8 hit the blue button, look at the = hit the blue button, and then I see 15 in the result field. It sounds laborious, but it’s much faster than mousing through the numbers. It actually felt like keyboard shortcuts where you don’t have to memorize the correct shortcut keys. You just look at what you want and keep hitting the same blue button. Broad Applications Tobii’s eye-tracking technology was initially designed as a research tool and as an assistive communication device for those with disabilities. Someone without the ability to speak, for example, could communicate by looking at sounds or words on a screen. Now the company is venturing into broad consumer applications. The first generation product that I tried, the Tobii Rex, works only with Windows 8 machines and costs about $1000 for a USB add-on. But as with most new technologies, costs are sure to come down quickly with mass adoption – and I see the potential. I tried a variety of computing tasks, reading e-mail, mapping, using a calculator, gaming – blowing up Asteroids without a mouse or keyboard – and was impressed by all. Plus, companies like Haier are licensing Tobii’s underlying technology and developing prototype eye-tracking TV controls. Good news, couch potatoes: soon, you won’t even have to move your hands to change the channel. Predictions I see a lot of demos, but this one is the real deal. I predict that eye-tracking technology will be baked into the computers we see rolled out at the next Consumer Electronics Show in 2014. Check back for more CES coverage or like us on Facebook to get the must-see consumer tech developments delivered to your newsfeed. [Related: Hidden Powers of Your Mouse] end quote from: Could Eye-Tracking Replace Your Mouse? | Upgrade Your Life ... I suppose it was inevitable that we would go from Carpal Tunnel in one's wrists to Carpal tunnel eye muscles. But how do you repair Carpal tunnel eyes muscles? Maybe by keeping your regular mouse and going back and forth between the eye mouse and the hand mouse and then talking your commands and words one could completely eliminate keyboards entirely? This way you could have just verbal commands with one button to turn it on and then verbally turn off your computer. With commands and something like "dragon naturally speaking" or something like that the keyboard might be completely eliminated from computers, tablets and smartphones. However, you might want a keyboard  for when you were in public to have private texting,  private composing and private research.