7 najważniejszych przypadków i zastosowań technologii 3D Eye Tracking

Eyes are the window to the soul. Whether or not this is true, what is undeniable is how much information the eyes can tell us about each other. The cooperative eye hypothesis suggests that the human eye has evolved to increase the size and brightness of the white sclera, for us to communicate better by following each other’s gaze. By combining this human feature with new technologies, like 3D eye tracking, we can further advance the way we communicate and the machines around us.

Speech recognition, motion detection, and touch control are all elements that we have seen integrated into everyday devices. One essential part that is missing is looking into the eyes of the user and understanding their attention, interest, and engagement, as people would naturally do when interacting with each other. Attention tracking is a game-changer. 

The introduction of 3D eye tracking, i.e., using consumer depth-sensing cameras to track the eye-gaze, now opens up exciting new applications for human-machine interactions.

Here are the top 3d eye tracking applications in different fields:

1. Attention Tracking in Retail

Instead of asking a pre-selected focus group to wear glasses for a market research study on shelf attention, potentially influencing their behavior, 3D eye tracking allows for accurately tracking passersby’s gaze accurately and non-intrusively. By monitoring the customer’s attention, retailers can then analyze product performance. Attention tracking helps companies with valuable analytics. 3D eye tracking can provide shelf-attention analytics that identifies the number of views and focal points without the need for calibration. Market research companies can then use those gained insights to suggest optimizations to retailers concerning their sales approach and customer experience. Eye tracking analytics will propel your company’s competitive advantage.

Man Standing In Front Of A Shopping Shelf Using A Retail 3D Eye-Tracking Heatmap

2. Eye tracking for Robotics

Both are enabled to detect and predict people’s intentions and attention towards objects.

3D gaze tracking within robotics allows for a more natural and collaborative human-robot interaction. Currently, robots cannot accurately read human levels of engagement. However, given their “pair of eyes” that use depth-sensing cameras together with eye tracking software, they can generate a 3D gaze vector. Both are enabled to detect, track and predict people’s intention and attention towards objects. Use cases are found in collaborative robots, educational robots, service robots, or assistive robots, especially when a wide range of movement and interaction with real objects is required.

Watch a demo of this educational robot research project by Professor Joakim Gustaffson of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The sensor used for the 3D eye tracking is an Intel RealSense camera placed in front of a Furhat robot.

3. Eye tracking for Automotive

Eye tracking for the automotive industry will make roads safer. The limited tracking box and the need for a multisensor set up to track the gaze in 3D limit the applicability of current eye tracking technologies in cars. Gaze recognition will be solving two main issues concerning human-car interaction.

Automotive: Driver Monitoring & Eye Tracking

According to the European New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP), not only will driver monitoring be considered a “primary safety” standard by 2020, but they also suggest that “the assessment will revolve around how reliably and accurately the status of the driver is detected.” Therefore, detecting the driver’s attention to monitor and enable coordinated handovers in semi-autonomous cars will be a must. In the future, the driver is constantly being monitored, and his attention is tracked using depth-sensing cameras. Using the cameras’ data, the tracking software checks the driver’s attention.

Automotive Virtual Co-Pilot

Cars are robots. They are already interacting with the driver based on voice and gesture commands. However, attention sensing and tracking in the automotive industry have lagged. 3D eye tracking software for the automotive sector can enable the “seeing car assistant” to sense the driver and passengers’ gaze towards parts of the in-car infotainment system such as the dashboard, central console, and mirrors,  but also allow natural interactions with augmented reality heads-up displays and even enable the virtual co-pilot to detect the gaze towards objects outside to the car.

Man In Car Using 3D Eye-Tracking Software

4. Consumer devices

Mobile phones, like the iPhone X or the Xiaomi Mi8, and laptops with user-facing depth-sensing cameras can be upgraded to run 3D eye tracking software without needing an additional eye tracking device. The depth-sensing camera is then enabled to detect screen attention towards parts of the screen, possibly allowing the user to navigate the device partially with their eyes. Eye tracking technology in mobile phones will vastly improve users utilizing a new way of input. For gaming laptops, 3D gaze tracking can heighten the gaming experience when interacting with avatars or dimming out info menus that are out of focus to declutter the screen.

User-Facing Depth Sensing Camera On An Iphone

5. Assistive technology solutions

Customized software solutions using consumer depth-sensing cameras can be used to assist less-abled users in controlling a computer, with mouse functions being mapped onto head movements, facial gestures, and gaze tracking. The enhanced assisted ability would allow the user to have better communication with greater ease. Users can also guide a robotic assistive arm towards their object of interest while reducing the need for tedious joystick control to a minimum. In the video below, Henny Admoni, Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, presents her research on how gaze recognition can improve human-robot coordination.

6. Eye tracking in Advertising

Advertisers can better analyze the attention and focus of the consumer on outdoor advertisements by using 3D eye tracking analytics that does not require any calibration process.

Audience analytics can inform the number of views of the advert, the emotional reception, the most attentive time of day, and other real-time statics that are beneficial to the advertiser.

7. Behavioral research

Eye tracking software is often used to diagnose specific behavioral syndromes.

Conditions such as ADHD and autism can be more easily detected by tracking how people visually consume information. However, especially for children, it can often be challenging to keep them within the tracking range of current eye trackers and sometimes even impossible to follow a strict calibration procedure. 3D eye tracking can alleviate these pain points, with a broader tracking range, under various extreme head positions, and with the option to allow uncalibrated tracking. The advantages of eye tracking software of Eyeware are, for example, no glasses and the use of consumer depth-sensing cameras.

 

We would be glad to help you try real-time 3D gaze coding with our software. Reach out to the Eyeware Team with a direct message.