eWEAR: A simpler approach to eye tracking for virtual reality
Meeting Reports
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Nov 11, 2022
Eye tracking has now become commonplace from virtual reality to market research. But there’s a catch. Current eye-tracking technologies require several cameras and highly complex mathematics to triangulate the user’s gaze. It’s costly in terms of the weight and bulk of all those cameras and computationally demanding as well in the mathematics needed to calculate the exact position of the pupil.
Against that backdrop, researchers at Stanford University say they have developed a simplified eye-tracking technology that uses a lone, off-the-shelf camera, an infrared light source like those found in TV remote controls in households the world over, and an invisible, ultrathin layer of patterned silicon on the inside of the lens of a pair of standard eyeglasses.
“In virtual reality, the design challenge is high,” says lead researcher, Mark Brongersma, a professor of materials science at Stanford University. “You want something fashionable and lightweight, yet very functional.”
The user must be able to peer out through the glasses to the outside world with a view as clear as with everyday eyeglasses, or look at a VR screen without distortion or color aberrations that would rob virtual reality of its realism. At the same time, the computational system needs a tool that can image the eye and calculate where it is looking.
Enter nanoscale optics—lightweight, transparent, and powerful.
Eye tracking has now become commonplace from virtual reality to market research. But there’s a catch. Current eye-tracking technologies require several cameras and highly complex mathematics to triangulate the user’s gaze. It’s costly in terms of the weight and bulk of all those cameras and computationally demanding as well in the mathematics needed to calculate the exact position of the pupil.
Against that backdrop, researchers at Stanford University say they have developed a simplified eye-tracking technology that uses a lone, off-the-shelf camera, an infrared light source like those found in TV remote controls in households the world over, and an invisible, ultrathin layer of patterned silicon on the inside of the lens of a pair of standard eyeglasses.
“In virtual reality, the design challenge is high,” says lead researcher, Mark Brongersma, a professor of materials science at Stanford University. “You want something fashionable and lightweight, yet very functional.”
The user must be able to peer out through the glasses to the outside world with a view as clear as with everyday eyeglasses, or look at a VR screen without distortion or color aberrations that would rob virtual reality of its realism. At the same time, the computational system needs a tool that can image the eye and calculate where it is looking.
Enter nanoscale optics—lightweight, transparent, and powerful.
