But the laptop had one weakness: you still needed your hands. You couldn’t type with it and you had to still press the mouse button to execute commands. Eye tracking seemed like the next big thing, but it’s been held back – until now. Last week, the Tobii folks stopped by DT’s NY office and showed us what we’ve always wanted: an eye-tracking tablet where your eyes can do it all.
Tobii calls it the EyeMobile and it lets you control all of Windows with only your eyes.
How it looks
The EyeMobile unit we saw looks like an armored Microsoft Surface. A metal cradle comfortably holds the tablet at whatever angle you’d like. Beneath it is a small, hot dog-sized black sensor bar, which uses two infrared cameras to locate the exact position of your eyes with incredible precision and speed. It connects to the Surface (or any Windows 8 tablet) via USB.
Tobii has its own custom Windows 8 desktop application that layers itself on top of Windows (sorry to the dozens of you out there with RT devices, this isn’t compatible). Once you turn it on, the app will always run in the background, and you’re ready to stop using your hands.
Learning to ride
Learning how to control a tablet with only your eyes isn’t the easiest thing. As much as Tobii would like, Windows is still built around touch input, so to make it work, the Tobii app has to teach you how to make your eyes work more like a mouse or finger. This takes some time to get used to, but for those who may want, or need, to use a computer or mobile device without their hands, learning is no obstacle.
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