Eye Tribe a Danish company is working to bring eye tracking technology to your smartphones, by the end of 2015 you may be playing games on smartphone using your eyes, a blink of your eyes, or pupil movement to control the game. Eye Tribe formed by four friends, Sune Alstrup Johansen (CEO), Javier San Agustin, Martin Tall, and Henrik Skovsgaard in 2011, to create an “Eye tracking technology” at an affordable cost. Johansen was working with Bjorn, who was suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: this is a progressive neurodegenerative disease and a person suffering from this cannot move, speak, eat or breathe since their muscles cannot work they can only use their eyes to convey message), thats when they decided to working on the eye tracking technology. The technology developed by Eye Tribe is far more cheaper than the normal eye trackers which are mainly used in research purpose and ad analytics and costs upwards of $10000.00. On the contrary the Eye Tribe tracker is available for as low as $99.00 and hence is affordable by common user. Eye Tribe had started producing such trackers for the disabled and now the company is expanding to produce them on a larger scale. Eye Tribe has also received a $2.3 million grant from government of U.S. and another $1 million in funding from private European investors. Eye Tribe manufactures the smallest eye tracking device in the world and has broken the record for the same. Also the tracker is easily portable as it does not require any external power supply and it gets attached to smart phones, computers, Tablets which then enables the user to operate these devices just by their eyes. Eye Tribe’s tracker works on the principle of advanced core algorithm developed by noted Mathematician Javier San Agustine from Spain.The tracker uses a camera and high resolution infrared LED as input devices. Camera captures the user’s pupil movements and produces images which is then run through the smart algorithmic software which helps the device to make out where the pupils are actually focussed. As per Johansen the tracker will surely be of use for common people for their day to day requirement as one can get their work done just by eye movement. New models of smartphones may incorporate Eye Tribe tracker in their future launches in 2015, one of them is Sony for sure. Enabling this device means it will attract more buyers and the younger generation. A demo held by Eye Tribe to check the Lego model of the device proved that the device was user friendly to the younger generation however the older generation needed a demo prior to using the tracker. Some smartphones already have the infrared cameras installed however the Eye Tracking tracker inbuilt in mobile would still be an innovative step. It will enable a person to enjoy playing games only by the movement of eyes, many more innovative ways of using eye tracker would be like a guitarist can also continuously play his guitar and simultaneously scroll the screen with his eyes without abruptly stopping and many more ideas to come. So in all 2015 might just bring about the invention of smart mobile phones and a new range of computer, laptops and Tablets which have the Eye Tribe Eye tracker inbuilt within affordable rates and a different way of using these device as we will only have to concentrate on the required application and not use our fingers for the same.
