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For
- Sturdy Construction
- Intuitive eyes-only control
- Easy to learn
Against
- Extremely expensive
- Only works with Windows 8 and 8.1
Hands-free tablet control exists, but at a steep price
The ways in which we can control our devices is on a steady rate of evolution. First we went from keyboards and mice to touchscreens, and now we're twiddling our fingers in the air with the Leap Motion. Tobii hopes to bring the next revolution with its EyeMobile device that lets users visually tap on hardware with only their peepers at them.At a recent CES Unveiled NY event night we got some hands-on, or rather eyes-on time with the Tobii EyeMobile eye-tracking device.
To the average user it might just be a novelty to control the tablet with their gaze, but for people who are paralyzed or have disabilities that make it difficult for them to use their arms, the EyeMobile could be a valuable tool in using the technology.
That said, all this eye-tracking wizardry comes at a steep price of $3,245 (about £2,020/AU$3,483), a price that includes a mount and Surface Pro. The eye-tracking device itself costs $1,995 (about £1,242/AU$2,141) and another $350 (about £219/AU$375) for the bracket. Now that you've spewed your drink everywhere, let's see how it really works.
Design
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The EyeMobile unit, which is about the size of a frankfurter, sits at the bottom of the cradle. Beneath the shiny black plastic on the sensor bar there are two infrared cameras that track the location of your eyes.
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Software
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As for the user control application itself, Tobii runs a custom overlay on top of Windows 8. The interface starts with a black and blue bar that sits on the right side of the screen. From here, we could select any number of look-and-pick options for commands such as clicking, zooming and scrolling.
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But before we could actually select anything, glancing over to the right menu bar and picking an action icon was required. It's a bit of an added hassle, but a necessary step to prevent accidental clicks on every single thing we were looking at. Luckily, our eyes move faster than our hands.
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Other then tapping on tablets for something to happen, using the EyeMobile really isn't that different in comparison since we already select options and parts of the screen we want to look at with our eyes first.
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