One of the more entertaining pastimes for the technology-obsessives among us is trying to guess which outlandish innovations will actually catch on. We’re still waiting patiently for the smartwatch phenomenon to kick off, but in the meantime, there are plenty of other fascinating ideas to keep an eye on.
One of those ideas is the ability to control a device with eye-tracking, but there are still a few hurdles to overcome before anyone can make this a reality.
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In a patent application published on Tuesday, Apple discussed one of the biggest hurdles:
“Troxler fading is a phenomenon of visual perception that the human brain uses to cope with blind spots on the retina, which is the light-sensitive tissue lining of the inner surface of the eye. One result of this phenomenon is that when one fixates on a particular point, objects in one’s peripheral vision will fade away and disappear.”
an image which illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. Just stare at the center of the image and wait for the Troxler fading to take effect.
Apple proposes several solutions to ensure that Troxler fading will not interfere with eye-tracking control. This is just of them:
“In one configuration, altering the position of the movable indicator may include providing a command to an input device driver that prompts the GUI to render the movable indicator at a position in the GUI different from the position associated with the user’s point of gaze within the GUI. In this manner, data from an input device to the input device driver may be preempted such that the measure for counteracting the perceptual fading of the movable indicator is implemented without action on behalf of the user.”
For the rest, be sure to check out the full patent application in the source link below.
