Welcome to the future: Windows 8 can now be deftly controlled by our eyes!

Over the years we have come across technologies that have actually accentuated upon of our level of machine interaction, but not at the cost of extra physical motion. After all, our modern lifestyle is all about hurrying. And we are certainly making that transition from mundanely typing on our keyboards to swiftly swiping across touchscreens or even just nonchalantly commanding through voice recognition software. Well, in this regard, Tobii (a company that specializes in eye-tracking technology) has rather notched it up a level by contriving an innovative system which literally allows us to control Windows 8 with our very own eyes.

Tobii's technology

The next generation Windows has been touted in the media for two of its unique features: the vivacious Metro screen with live tiles and the operating system's tendency to finger swiping touchscreen mechanism. The second feature is obviously related to user interaction, and this is where Tobii enters into the picture. The company has ingeniously developed an eye control device that can regulate the icons (and any link) on the screen by just the gazing of your eyes.

Sound strangely futuristic? Well, it certainly is! And what's more; according to Gizmodo, the technology is just superbly simplistic, as they had found in the testing phase. The eye control device in itself consists of narrow rectangular glass component that is fixed horizontally along the bottom part (hinge) of a laptop screen. For starting out, the mechanism has to be calibrated to a personal preference scale, along with the inclusion of unique finger movements. And once this setting up is done, the fascinating system provides for a novel and accurate user device interaction, as never seen before in the electronic realm.

As a matter of fact, the functionality entails a very user friendly and unobtrusive procedure. For example, if as a user, you to want to access the Internet Explorer on the Windows 8 home screen; you just have to look at the icon, while touching the track pad. Quite instantaneously, the icon would get selected from your simple visual gaze. Then if you would just release your finger from the pad, the app would be accessed in a single step (as opposed to double clicking from mouse, or tapping from touchscreen). You can check out the mechanism in the video (provided later in the article).

So, basically the whole cumbersome scope of physical touch and motion gets conveniently limited in the intriguing process. According to Gizmodo, the system is definitely lightning fast; as it never missed the user's 'visual' target by more than a few pixels, in the testing phase. Moreover, Tobii has also designed their indigenous demo game to showcase the effortless accuracy of the aforementioned eye control technology. The game calls for shooting virtual asteroids with your bare eyes, and the mechanism deftly allows so without even batting 'an eyelid'.

The year of 2012 is certainly marked for some progressive technologies in the field of electronics. But while we are waiting for the next iterations of iPhone, Kinect and even Wii, Tobii has seriously pushed the benchmark for a slew of competitive tech companies out there.

Via: Gizmodo