[HN Gopher] Tobii Pro Glasses 3
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       Tobii Pro Glasses 3
        
       Author : punnerud
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2022-04-30 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tobiipro.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tobiipro.com)
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | If the gaze tracking resolution is reasonably decent, these
       | really extend the utility of Tobii products for
       | neuroscience/psych research (where i've used previous Tobii
       | products before), but also really does open the door for things
       | like gaze-driven HCI for people with very limited mobility. I've
       | prototyped gaze-based T9 input and the like before, and it's
       | probably doable.
        
       | emptybits wrote:
       | "8 IR illuminators per eye"
       | 
       | Honest question: is there any reason to be concerned about such
       | near and constant IR illumination directed at one's eyes?
        
         | daniel_reetz wrote:
         | Generally with near-infrared emitters, the main issue is tissue
         | heating up. Of course this depends on the tissue, the specific
         | wavelength(s), and the angular distribution of the emitter.
         | 
         | OSRAM has an excellent datasheet about this, AN090 . If you're
         | curious about how this kind of thing is safely engineered, have
         | a look!
        
           | daniel_reetz wrote:
           | Also the reason for 8 emitters is to have lots of points to
           | track, not to provide a huge amount of light.
        
         | ta988 wrote:
         | Old tracking systems I tried were really uncomfortable due to
         | that and couldn't be used long. Hope these are better
         | (disclaimer it was 10 years ago).
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | lizardactivist wrote:
         | No, it's an insignificant increase over what your eyes already
         | receive.
        
           | andai wrote:
           | Does that account for the fact that it's decoupled from
           | visible light? Afaik the iris contracts in response to
           | visible light, so here could get exposed to more IR
           | proportionally. (OTOH either way in absolute terms the amount
           | you get from sunlight is orders of magnitude more than you'd
           | get from a few LEDs.)
        
         | spyder wrote:
         | It may even improve eye-sight in the short-term:
         | 
         | https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298723-red-light-thera...
         | 
         | I'm not sure about the energy and wavelength difference
         | compared to the glasses. But even if it has a positive effect
         | from short-term exposure, it may also have bad effect from too
         | much exposure.
        
         | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
         | "The most common eye disease associated with near-infrared
         | radiation is cataracts. Prolonged exposure to IR radiation
         | causes a gradual but irreversible opacity of the lens. Other
         | forms of damage to the eye from IR exposure include scotoma,
         | which is a loss of vision due to the damage to the retina. Even
         | low-level IR absorption can cause symptoms such as redness of
         | the eye, swelling, or hemorrhaging."
         | 
         | https://ehs.lbl.gov/resource/documents/radiation-protection/...
        
         | hammock wrote:
         | I guess it would be like looking up at one of those security
         | cameras that are ringed with IR LEDs
        
       | sklargh wrote:
       | Has anyone tried to use these for a home flight simulator
       | application? It seems like these or the pupil-labs equivalent
       | could deeply improve immersion vs. TrackIR.
        
       | lekevicius wrote:
       | Those cameras inside lenses look unbelievably small. I didn't
       | know "we have the technology" like that, feels spy movie
       | territory.
        
         | nerdponx wrote:
         | Can't wait for these to be embedded in "smart" TVs for gaze
         | tracking during ads.
        
           | donkeyd wrote:
           | TVs are massive, so they don't have to be this small and you
           | can already buy TVs with built in cameras, since it can be
           | used for video conferencing. Also, this type of tech can
           | already be used to measure ad awareness in stores [0]. It's
           | also starting to be implemented in cars, to check whether
           | you're paying attention to the road while using 'autonomous'
           | systems.
           | 
           | So... This is not really a type of tech that will enable your
           | fears, it already exists, there just doesn't seem a business
           | model for applying it in TVs yet.
           | 
           | 0: https://www.unravelresearch.com/en/blog/eye-tracking-in-
           | adve...
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | Those tendrils are cameras?! What the hell?
        
           | lekevicius wrote:
           | In each lens, 2 are cameras (inner bottom), other 8 are IR
           | illuminators.
        
             | stavros wrote:
             | Ah okay, that makes more sense, thank you.
        
         | nrp wrote:
         | Those are most likely modules using wafer level optics:
         | https://ams.com/cmos-micro-camera-module
        
           | lekevicius wrote:
           | NanEyeC is 1mm by 1mm, with 320 x 320 resolution.
           | Unbelievable. And slightly worrying: it totally breaks my
           | expectation of what can contain a camera.
        
       | tiahura wrote:
       | I just wish they'd improve their eye bar to the point where it
       | can be used as a viable alternative to a mouse.
       | 
       | For those of us with RSI's like mouse-shoulder it would be a
       | godsend.
        
       | Torkel wrote:
       | HDMI out? Makes me curious what tech they have on the glasses vs
       | in the dongle/box... maybe it's convenient to use hdmi cable's
       | twisted pairs to just take the csi/mipi from the cameras straight
       | out and then do processing externally?
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | Darn it; _amazing_ looking technology and then  "contact sales".
       | Oh well.
        
         | throwanem wrote:
         | Maybe somebody will put together a group buy.
        
           | Readywater wrote:
           | Tobii is pretty intense about this stuff, esp re licensing.
           | Their gaming stuff can't be used for research, for example.
           | It's a similar vibe to eInk.
        
             | light_hue_1 wrote:
             | Tobii can say whatever it wants. The license you accept
             | only applies to their software, not to their hardware. You
             | own that. You can use their gaming devices to do research
             | all you want, as long as you use your own software with
             | them.
        
               | oori wrote:
               | Proof please?!
               | 
               | "The license you accept only applies to their software,
               | not to their hardware."
               | 
               | As far as I know, their EULA has three groups: gamers,
               | commercial, research. You can buy a 3000EUR research
               | license that simply allows you to collect the eye
               | tracking data on the basic 250EUR devices...
        
               | throwanem wrote:
               | Tobii can _sue_ whoever they want, too. You sure you can
               | afford better representation than theirs? If they 're as
               | assertive about their license terms as it sounds like
               | they are, I'd think hard about it first, I suppose.
        
               | emteycz wrote:
               | How do you do that with a device with locked
               | bootloader/firmware? Is alternative firmware even
               | available? I don't think so...
        
         | GekkePrutser wrote:
         | If you have to ask you can't afford it :)
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | Yeah, my reaction was half bemoaning the lack of information,
           | and half bemoaning what that implied.
        
       | ex_nihil wrote:
       | Does anyone know of a good example of eye-tracking being used for
       | HCI where it surpasses keyboard/mouse? When searching for it most
       | of the use seems to be in foveated rendering, research, marketing
       | or accessibility.
        
         | jdmoreira wrote:
         | If these glasses can be used to control a mouse pointer in an
         | effective way, I'm interested!
        
           | hatware wrote:
           | Unfortunately it's not that accurate. At least not without
           | adjusting UI scaling.
        
         | Kiro wrote:
         | Games.
        
         | DonHopkins wrote:
         | I once gave Marvin Minsky a headache by showing a video tape of
         | bright blinking PostScript graphics! I apologized, and we had a
         | nice conversation about how eye tracking interfaces tend to do
         | the same thing.
         | 
         | https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Telepresence.html
         | 
         | >Telepresence, by Marvin Minsky, Omni Magazine, June 1980
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyU79dFbH0Q
         | 
         | >Zero Bandwidth Video: SCAN 1981. Zero Bandwidth Video: SCAN is
         | an excerpt from demos of Architecture Machine Group project
         | circa 1980 an interactive portrait of Raleigh Perkins with
         | various input devices to manipulate the image. The viewer
         | pushes a joystick to make her look in various directions,
         | Nicholas Negroponte demonstrates linking the portrait to an eye
         | tracking device. SCAN was exhibited at SIGGRAPH Art Show 1989.
         | 
         | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352739339_The_Incom...
         | 
         | >The Incomplete Tyranny of Dynamic Stimuli: Gaze Similarity
         | Predicts Response Similarity in Screen-Captured Instructional
         | Videos
         | 
         | >Although eye tracking has been used extensively to assess
         | cognitions for static stimuli, recent research suggests that
         | the link between gaze and cognition may be more tenuous for
         | dynamic stimuli such as videos. Part of the difficulty in
         | convincingly linking gaze with cognition is that in dynamic
         | stimuli, gaze position is strongly influenced by exogenous cues
         | such as object motion. However, tests of the gaze-cognition
         | link in dynamic stimuli have been done on only a limited range
         | of stimuli often characterized by highly organized motion.
         | Also, analyses of cognitive contrasts between participants have
         | been mostly been limited to categorical contrasts among small
         | numbers of participants that may have limited the power to
         | observe more subtle influences. We, therefore, tested for
         | cognitive influences on gaze for screen-captured instructional
         | videos, the contents of which participants were tested on.
         | Between-participant scanpath similarity predicted between-
         | participant similarity in responses on test questions, but with
         | imperfect consistency across videos. We also observed that
         | basic gaze parameters and measures of attention to centers of
         | interest only inconsistently predicted learning, and that
         | correlations between gaze and centers of interest defined by
         | other-participant gaze and cursor movement did not predict
         | learning. It, therefore, appears that the search for eye
         | movement indices of cognition during dynamic naturalistic
         | stimuli may be fruitful, but we also agree that the tyranny of
         | dynamic stimuli is real, and that links between eye movements
         | and cognition are highly dependent on task and stimulus
         | properties.
        
         | punnerud wrote:
         | Something like this? Fast, but still a way to go before it's
         | faster. [Hands-Free Coding: How I develop software using
         | dictation and eye-tracking]
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24846887
         | 
         | "I'd say I probably work at about 50% of my normal speed*. Now,
         | this doesn't mean that I produce 50% of the results; it just
         | means I need to prioritize a little more ruthlessly."
        
       | hatware wrote:
       | The USB Tobii Eye tracker is pretty sweet. It seems gimmicky at
       | first, but a number of games have great support for it.
        
         | jonnycomputer wrote:
         | Out of curiosity, what is the gaming use case for eyetracking?
         | I'm in research, and we use Tobii eyetracking during
         | experiments, but I never thought about its use in games.
        
           | hatware wrote:
           | In flight simulators or driving games, it gives more range of
           | motion by tracking head position and gaze. The really good
           | implementations allow you to do more head tracking, or more
           | eye tracking, depending on your preference. FS2020 needed
           | some tweaking in this department, when I turned my head to
           | look behind me IRL, the game camera would spin like mad. The
           | responsiveness is pretty shocking to say the least.
           | 
           | In shooters, there's an added "snap to aim" feature that is
           | borderline cheating, it snaps your aim to where you may be
           | looking. I've only seen it in non-competitive and first
           | person games though. For competitive shooters, the tracking
           | can be very useful to know you weren't looking in the right
           | place at the right time, if you care about that stuff. There
           | is an overlay you can enable which shows where your gaze is
           | calculated in real time.
           | 
           | In third person games, gaze can be used to reveal information
           | in the HUD (hide HUD elements unless I look at them) and to
           | aim throwable objects. More gimmicky in these cases, but
           | simply having more field of view without having to move your
           | mouse/arm is useful IMO.
        
             | jonnycomputer wrote:
             | Oh, wow, cool. Thanks.
        
       | Absor wrote:
       | It is very uncomfortable looking at these from the front as the
       | cameras and illuminators look like spikes aiming for the eyes.
        
         | DonHopkins wrote:
         | Not quite as uncomfortable as the earlier Clockwork Orange
         | glasses.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQApGLbgNg
        
         | lizardactivist wrote:
        
         | JohnJamesRambo wrote:
         | All I could imagine is ad companies looking at these and
         | envisioning their Clockwork Orange dream of eyes with the lids
         | held open.
        
           | azinman2 wrote:
           | Probably less useful than a google search, which shows
           | explicit intent. If you followed me around all day long you'd
           | have an overwhelming amount of noise.
        
         | Kiro wrote:
         | Not really. You probably suffer from aichmophobia.
        
           | goldenkey wrote:
           | I don't suffer from that ailment and agree with OP. Looks
           | like a bunch of needles all an incident away from going
           | straight through my eyeball.
        
         | zestyping wrote:
         | They could have fixed this easily by running all the wires
         | horizontally. Seems like a surprising oversight. First
         | impressions matter.
        
       | brifsttar wrote:
       | For more affordable and open-source alternatives, you might be
       | interested in Pupil Labs[0].
       | 
       | [0]: https://pupil-labs.com/
        
         | GordonS wrote:
         | EUR5,900?
         | 
         | How much are the Tobii glasses if Pupil Labs' are almost 6
         | thousand Euro?!
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | These aren't consumer products. They're specialized business
           | products aimed at market researchers. In that context,
           | EUR5,900 doesn't seem expensive at all to me, and I'd expect
           | the Tobii glasses to be more.
        
             | etothepii wrote:
             | The tobii monitor mounted eye tracker that delivers almost
             | all the value required for SWE is only a few hundred
             | dollars.
        
               | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
               | Which proves my point exactly. The Tobii Eye Tracker V is
               | a consumer-oriented product marketed to gamers. The
               | market-research-oriented use cases that one would need
               | for a "walking around pair of eye-tracking glasses" are
               | totally different, and they're priced accordingly.
        
               | marvin wrote:
               | What does SWE mean in this context?
        
       | singularity2001 wrote:
       | I want the opposite: Google Glasses without any sensors but with
       | iPhone adapter, so I can read the subtitles of real time chinese
       | conversations.
        
         | cududa wrote:
         | This is a product for HCI/ UX researchers, not consumers
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | Anyone know the status of Google Glass for consumers? Last I
         | heard they nixed the consumer version because of poor market
         | reception (lots of people started calling users "glassholes"
         | and banning them from bathrooms and stuff because they never
         | knew when they were recording), but surely at some point
         | they'll be cheaper and more available?
        
       | chaostheory wrote:
       | I wonder what happens when more mainstream VR headsets get eye
       | tracking?
        
         | Duralias wrote:
         | More immersive social VR. Personally really looking forward to
         | this because "the eyes are a mirror to the soul" is very
         | apparent when you see well made avatars with eye tracking.
         | 
         | The possibility of dynamic foveated rendering, which is
         | probably how Valve could realistically use an APU in their
         | rumored Deckard.
         | 
         | And of course intrusive ads and data collection.
         | 
         | Morbidly curious to see how long it takes before platforms
         | start using ML algorithms to create personalized ads that are
         | tailored to make you look at them for as long as possible, one
         | would hope such a thing would kill a platform.
        
       | wly_cdgr wrote:
       | Nobody needs to know how much time I spend looking at photos of
       | sandwiches
        
       | hammock wrote:
       | Anyone have an idea of how much these are, and the software?
        
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