How Does Eye Tracking Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
823 words · ~4 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos
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so wouldn't it be useful if you could instantly know where people are looking
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without having to stare back at them maybe you're wondering if your crush is
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checking you out from across the room or maybe you're just hoping that no one can
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see you picking your nose inside the car well we haven't invented 360 degree
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bionic vision implants yet but there are a number of eye tracking technologies
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out there that can at least help your computer know exactly what you're
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looking at which has applications and feels from gaming to marketing to even
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psychology but how exactly do they work well it turns out there are a number of
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different ways to keep an eye on your eyeballs
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and the modern history of eye tracking goes all the way back to 1908 when
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psychologist edmund huey developed a contraption that looked like a contact
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lens with the lens part attached to a needle that would measure where the eye
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was pointed of course it wasn't exactly comfortable to have a gadget physically
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touching the user's eyes so while we patiently waited for the cubs to win
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another world series other inventors pushed the field forward
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and funnily enough it was in chicago in 1937 that another method of eye tracking
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was developed that involves shining light onto a subject's eyes and exposing
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the reflections onto film to understand human reading patterns now obviously
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modern eye tracking systems have dispensed with physical film but this
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strategy of examining light that reflects off your eyes is key to how
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consumer eye trackers work today you see eye trackers like toby which are
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gaining popularity with pc gamers fire infrared light instead of visible light
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at your eyes so the tracker will disturb your vision while you're in the heat of
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battle now this light is usually shown in the specific pattern which lands on
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your eye making it easier for the infrared camera built into the tracker
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to keep tabs on changes in how the light is being reflected
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so many times per second this camera will take infrared snapshots of the
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patterns on your eyes and process these images to determine where you're looking
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for gamers eye tracking is supported in quite a few popular games from indie
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titles to big budget aaa releases and can be used for everything from looking
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around the cockpit to determining where your targeting reticle will go in the
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shoot em up game and the technology has also shown problems for players with
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disabilities who might find traditional controllers difficult to use or even vr
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gamers who want the more realistic experience of the headset display
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adjusting to where their eyes are looking rather than just head movements
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and as for outside the gaming world eye tracking has also been used across
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disciplines to figure out what people are most interested in meaning it has
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obvious applications for advertisers eye tracking tech has already been used in
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studies that have revealed things about which elements of an advertisement or a
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web page best hold a viewer's attention and what things might just be taking up
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space or even turning the viewer off so this has raised concerns about how the
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technology may be used in the near future for example if you look at the
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digital display in the shopping mall containing an ad is there an infrared
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camera watching your eye movements without your knowledge is it being logged somewhere will websites end up
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being able to watch you through an eye tracker connected to your pc so that
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they can cook up even sneakier ways to serve you ads but even though eye
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tracking has plenty of applications in somewhat nefarious fields other areas
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like medical research also stand to benefit from it tremendously so you
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won't need a fancy eye or emitter and camera system to know that i'll be
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keeping an eye on it
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and anyone else looking to track you or profit from your data television has a
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