ay goodbye to repetitive motion syndrome. Your entire work-day – and recreation time – will soon be controlled with a look. Eye-tracking technology is on the verge of becoming the next major interface in our digital lives, as well as a major source of data to be mined. Taiwan-based company Ganzin Technology was spun out of eye-tracking research at National Taiwan University. At CES 2019 it launched its Aurora tracker. The tiny tracker was designed to be easily integrated into all kinds of devices, particularly with a view to incorporate it into AR and VR devices. Aurora then won a CES Innovation Award in 2020. Ganzin has worked hard to get Aurora into the sweet spot of a very small size, combined with low power consumption and affordability. The tracker can be easily integrated into partner technology such as VR goggles or lightweight AR glasses with incorporation of two bits of hardware: the EyeSensor and the Eye Processing Unit (EPU). Ganzin sees a world in which high-quality augmented reality will be a common, hands-free interface with the digital world, mostly through near-eye displays like AR glasses. The company is also counting on 5G networks to be a key driver of VR and AR technologies. “Eye tracking is a must-have component for AR and VR,” says Ganzin product manager Martin Lin. “Gaze is the only interface where you can point to a virtual object and a real object at the same time.” Surprisingly, instruments for recording and tracking the human gaze are over a century old. One of the earliest was a kind of contact lens connected to an aluminium pointer, developed by American psychologist Edmund Huey for studying
WHEN YOUWANT TO PICK UP A CUP, YOUR GAZE GOES TO THE CUP FIRST BEFORE YOU PICK IT UP The company has begun to work with Qualcomm and integrate with the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 AR/VR technology, which is used by most major AR and VR devices. They have also announced a new eye-tracking software package based on the XR2 platform. As a result, hardware developers using the Qualcomm platform will be able to easily integrate how a person’s eye moves when reading. Fortunately, eye-tracking tech has become a bit less intrusive. One of the recently used principal methods involves tracking reflections of near-infrared light in the cornea. But this method is too complex to lend itself well to everyday, consumer use. “They usually put a lot of components in front of your eyes,” explains Lin. “It could be more than 10 LED sensors. This means a high barrier for the device makers and they’re not fit for AR technologies or smart glasses.” Ganzin’s “micro eye-tracking module” is small enough to fit in the bridge of regular glasses. In addition to having an attractive form factor, the eye-tracking sensors, which analyse the position and direction of each eye, have been calibrated using machine learning based on a massive database of human eye images. Ganzin’s eye tracking into their products. Ganzin’s eye tracking also calculates eye convergence. Simpler types of eye tracking rely on a fixed distance between the user and subject matter to operate at their best. But for tracking to work properly in an AR world, it’s essential to pinpoint where in 3D space a user ’s gaze is aimed. This is how Iron Man is able to clock a bad guy 100 meters ahead, and immediately activate the missile controls floating four inches in front of his face. This also opens up the possibilities for true depth of field
EYE ON THE FUTURE Ganzin Technology was spawned from eye-tracking research at National Taiwan University
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