Future Supermarket Will Track Shoppers' Eye Movements
By ALISTAIR CHARLTON:
May 1, 2013 11:31 AM GMT
Scientists at Lancaster University have created
advertising screens which track your eye movement as you shop, offering adverts
relevant to what you're looking at and eye-controlled interactive displays.
The system requires no calibration and can be used to
scroll through products on a shop screen.
By monitoring the eye movement of passers-by, the
SideWays system can offer up adverts it thinks will be relevant to the products
shoppers are looking at.
The system was created by Andreas Bulling of the Max
Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, along with Yanxia
Zhang and Hans Gellersen from Lancaster University.
Beyond monitoring what products shoppers are looking at,
the SideWays system can also be used to help users interact with screens
without touching them. A demonstration of the technology shows users scrolling
through a list of album covers by looking to the left or right of the screen.
Previously able to work with just one person at a time
due to calibration requirements, the system has now been tested with 14 users
of various height, ages and eye colour without the need for calibration for
each person.
The three-man team explains in a detailed paper that
SideWays is "a novel person-independent eye gaze interface that supports
spontaneous interaction with displays. Users can just walk up to a display and
immediately interact using their eyes, without any prior user calibration or
training."
SideWays requires nothing more than an off-the-shelf
camera and what the scientists describe as "lightweight" image processing
software.
On previous eye-tracking systems calibration to each user
had been a "major stumbling block" Bulling told the BBC,
"because people always have to go through this calibration procedure -
it's time-consuming and annoying."
"Eye-tracking is definitely something that is
currently a hot topic," Bulling added. "It is really gaining
momentum. I fully expect this technology to become available widely in the near
future.".
The team's next step is to create a version of SideWays
which can track the gaze of multiple people at once, allowing for more complex
advertisements or even eye-controlled games.
The recently launched Samsung Galaxy S4 features
eye-tracking technology to scroll its screen up when the user reaches the
bottom, and to pause video when the user looks away. At CES in Las Vegas last
January, Tobii Technologies showed off its eye-tracking technology which can be
used to control various aspects of a PC.
Comments
Post a Comment