Gaze tracking

This weekend I had a sudden inspiration to use the i-Sight camera on my MacBook Air to write software that figures out where my eyes are looking on the computer screen. Such gaze tracking is definitely a hot topic these days. The newest Lenovo notebook computer has it built-in.

It turned out that the hardest part was finding code that would get anything at all from the i-Sight camera into Java. Once I found that out, the rest was pretty straightforward.

But one question kept nagging at me: I’ve been using one MacBook or another for almost two years now. Why did I suddenly, just this weekend, get an urge to implement a gaze tracker? And then it came to me — on some subliminal level I’m responding to the announcement of the IPad 2.

I never got an iPad when they first came out. I wasn’t even interested in the iPad. My response to all the hype was a consistent “Meh”. But the iPad 2 is not like the iPad. It has cameras — one facing you, and the other facing away from you. And that is interesting.

The camera facing you can be used to know where you are looking on the screen of the iPad 2. And the camera facing away from you can be used to create a cyber-enhanced (one might even say eccescopic) view of whatever lies on the other side of the iPad.

I think it is this possibility that the iPad can know where you are looking that matters here. Once millions of people can wander around in the world holding a consumer-friendly window into the internet, it becomes really interesting — empowering actually — for them to communicate through that window using their gaze and attention.

All of a sudden, just like that, after decades of interest by the geeky few, gaze tracking is actually about to become relevant to millions of people.