According to a VentureBeat report, companies Tobii and SteelSeries, a peripheral maker, entered into a strategic partnership to build a eye-tracking control system for game interaction. The report said the technology will enable players in games to interact using their eyes.
The Stockholm-based Tobii has pioneered the eye-tracking technology for over ten years, and is set to partner with the gaming peripheral maker in order to produce a commercial version for mass markets like video games. The report said the aim of both companies was to provide a new dimension for game interaction, which in turn will increase immersion in games. Should the venture be successful, the report said it could open a huge, nich segment, which it would dominate by being the first to supply game controller devices.
The report notes the promising precision control technology of Tobii. VentureBeat explained that Tobii utilizes a camera-like device to sense a user's eyeball in three dimensions and accurately predicts where a user is looking on a screen. Tobii has already applied such technology commercially in a control system for disabled individuals. Moreover, the report said the Stockholm-based company has already built Tobii EyeX, a controller used by clinical researchers to track eye movement for clinical studies.
VentureBeat said Tobii and SteelSeries will conduct a demonstration of the system next week at a huge trade show in Las Vegas called the 2014 International CES.
In an interview with the technology news site, Tobii vice president of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) Solutions Carl Korobkin said, "This is the perfect application for putting eye-tracking on the map for the mass market."
Korobkin also said the system could be used for any type of controls. like in first-person shooter games, virtual reality games, and that businesses could also use the system to track the attention rate of players to a certain part of a screen.
Join the Conversation