Just one glance and the PC obeys

But does it work, or is it just another high-tech gimmick? The gadget was on display for the first time at CeBit, a technology fair that took place earlier this month in Hanover, Germany, so InGear decided to find out.

But first a little information on the technology behind the system. An array of sensors has been built into the laptop between the computer screen and the keyboard. By sending a steady beam of invisible, near-infrared light into your eyes, and then monitoring how the light reflects off your corneas, the sensors can detect where your eyes are and calculate precisely (to within a few millimetres, say the makers) which point on its screen you are looking at.

Before using the system you must first calibrate it. This takes about 15 seconds and involves you following a dot moving on the screen. For it to work properly, your head must also be within the sensor’s field of view — between about 18in and 30in from the screen.

So, does it make life easier? Can you play games, edit documents and surf the web with no more than a glance? ‘‘Gaze control’’, as the makers have called it, is supposed to replace some of the functions of a mouse, and when tested it did just that. In order to engage it, you have to hold down the Alt key. This is a necessary and well thought-out feature because it means that wayward looks and head movements won’t trigger activities you don’t want.

The system works remarkably well for reading Microsoft Word documents. It can detect where your eyes are on the page, and when you reach the bottom of the screen, it automatically scrolls down — far quicker than if you were to carry out that task with a mouse.

There was a slight problem in that if you skim the documents — moving up and down the page, as many of us do — then the system tries to follow you. That means it can scroll up and down when you don’t want it to, but it’s a small failing. Other functions such as opening the drop-down menus in Word worked surprisingly well, if a little spookily. Once you’ve held down the Alt key, you simply stare at the menu you want — File, say — and it will open in a few seconds. Then you look at the option you want to choose — Print, perhaps — and wait until that is highlighted. Then you lift your finger off the Alt key to activate.

In all fairness, it was no faster than a mouse would be, but it’s much easier than using the old laptop nipples and many modern trackpads.

Gaze control also works when opening bookmarks or short cuts. Once you’ve pressed the Alt key, you just need to fix your stare on a shortcut icon on the computer desktop; lift off the Alt key and it will open that short cut without you needing to double-click. The same technique maximises and minimises different windows.

The limits of the system quickly become apparent, however. If you’re trying to edit a Word document and want to bring the cursor to a particular position in order to change a letter, say, it’s well nigh impossible. Tasks such as this may always require a mouse.

The gaze-activated capabilities extend to performing around 100 or so simple tasks in the Windows operating system, but Tobii — which claims to have spent €50m (£43m) on the project — envisages a future where the technology could be fully integrated into cars, homes and other devices such as cash machines.

The makers also say that the system can detect the precise direction of your gaze near-instantaneously — within 20 milliseconds. This was generally the case when we were scanning between different pages and documents, or zooming in on photos. That’s fast, but still not quick enough for fast-moving action games. We tested one in which players had to destroy asteroids in space simply by looking at them. The problem was the slight time lag between fixing your eyes on a target and when the laser fired. These are early days, though, and the technology is sure to get better.

At the moment, the gaze-control laptop is in what its makers are calling a “proof of concept stage”. Though Tobii has been producing commercial eye-tracking devices (which sell for around £26,000 a machine) for use by researchers in laboratories for nearly a decade, this is the first time it has tried to install the technology in a consumer-friendly computer, and the company admits there are improvements to be made — not least in the cost. Meanwhile, the hefty circuit board, which is still too large and juts out of the back of the laptop, will need to be miniaturised so that it can be installed in today’s slimline machines.

However, John Elvesjo, one of Tobii’s founders, is confident we will start to see the technology appearing in about two years’ time. “New types of user interfaces and intelligent computers are the future,” he says. “You can program it to do lots of different things. For instance, because I sometimes struggle with English words, I have programmed my system to help. When I’m reading an English document, if I dwell on a word for more than 0.4 seconds, it will bring up a Swedish translation.”

Elvesjo believes that the technology will supplement, though not supplant, the mouse. “We can remove around 80% of the times you need to click for a mouse,” he says. “But there are some things gaze control will never be able to do — particularly to do with graphics and drawing. And we don’t challenge the keyboard, either. Instead, you should think of this as a way to supplement what’s already there — helping to speed up certain tasks and make them easier.”

As for other technical limitations, the makers say that the eye-tracking system will work for most people wearing glasses — and even, the majority of the time, sunglasses — but high-prescription bifocals currently throw the system off.

So what are the conclusions? Despite the fact that the system is in a nascent state, there’s no doubt it does improve the speed at which you can do some tasks on a computer. However, it will probably not replace the trusty old mouse on a desktop computer; that may be almost 50-year-old technology but it’s still going strong and remains the best way to carry out a wide variety of tasks.

Yet there is one place where the system would almost certainly come into its own: on ultra-portable laptops — and especially netbooks — that often have to rely on fiddly and unresponsive trackpads. So, gaze-control really does offer a glimpse — if you’ll pardon the pun — of the near future.

Mice, meet your replacements

Touchscreen:
Sony Vaio L21, £1,200
Sony’s latest all-in-one PC (out at the end of this month) boasts a large 24in touchscreen that’s great for viewing multimedia files or surfing the web. The big innovation is that the bezel surrounding the screen is also touch-sensitive, with different parts of it corresponding to different key functions.

Stylus:
Wacom Bamboo Special Edition tablet, £109, wacom.eu
This touchscreen pad with a stylus offers a more precise alternative to a mouse and will appeal in particular to those who regularly use their computer for drawing or producing diagrams.

Voice control:
Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium, £150, nuance.co.uk
In recent years, speech-recognition software has advanced significantly, and Dragon offers the best package around. Once installed and calibrated to your voice, it enables you to create documents, send email, control applications and navigate the web — just by talking. It will also record dictation and transcribe it into a text file for you.

Motion sensor:
Microsoft Kinect, £133, xbox.com
Microsoft’s motion-sensor device for its Xbox 360 console translates a player’s body movements into actions on screen. It uses a camera and a depth sensor to detect gestures and has opened the door to new gaming options.

3-D mouse movement:
Gyration Air Mouse Elite, £90, gyration.com
Computer mice generally need to be in contact with a flat surface. Not so this wireless device, which works freely in three dimensions. Because it has a built-in accelerometer, you can hold it in your hands and wave it around in a similar fashion to a Nintendo Wii controller.