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Gaze Detector Lets You Hear With Your Eyes
tinkertim writes "Engadget is reporting that Manabe Hiroyuki has developed a personal 'being' assistant, the wearable headphone gaze detector. The device apparently takes notice of what you look at (and hear) and makes note of the more important events in your life that it records. From the article '[the device] is slightly less elegant than the traditional neural implant, with this system you could not only record the goings on of your days and "bookmark" important events, but also train the cameras to feed you information about your surroundings based on QR codes or possibly eventually object recognition; think of it as augmented aural reality triggered by giving a passing glance.'"
When the company that makes the software for this bundles spyware with it, how much are they going to make letting advertisers (and the occasional law enforcement agency) know what you've been looking at?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I've often wanted one of these. I surf and kitesurf with my buddies, ever now and then I see one of them pull of a sick trick that I'd like to record and show people.
To me it looks like a bloke wearing headphones with loads of wires coming out of it. I'm having difficulty believing that this device can record eye movements.
Does this actually follow your gaze without looking at your eyes? Surely the headphones can't be sensitive enough to pick up the neural or nervous signalling?
Still, it seems quite rudimentary compared with other AR projects like Tinmith: http://www.tinmith.net/
This is a really cool device, I've been looking forward to this for so long that I've contemplated building it myself.
Remember that augmented reality is what virtual reality isn't: Useful for everyday life. Imagine a device like this linked with a wearable computer. Imagine it puts everyone whose face you look at for more than a second into a face-recognition search to find out whether you know that person, and if so it shows you some details (full name, birthday, any important details you entered into your contacts database to make sure you never forget about this person) via some unobstrusive HUD.
Or imagine shopping with a wearable computer with online connection which can tell you that the gadget you're about to buy sells at $0.50 more next door, but they have 1 year guarantee instead of 6 months and a much better score on customer reviews.
Or, to simplify it again, just imagine having a device with you that records everything you see in a round-robin storage of just a minute or two - suddenly you can store all those moments that happened two seconds before you remembered to grab your digicam.
Augmented reality is a way cool research subject. If I were in university again, this is where I'd be heading.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Millions of people depend on wheel chairs and personal care workers to do almost everything for them. If this gaze detection could be developed a bit more, these people could type (even those without use of their arms or hands) record conversations selectively, operate home lighting and heating controls, and holler for help if they fall or (as frequently happens) a care person fails to show up.
My wife (and the agency she works for) works with a large population of people for whom technology hasn't quite fulfilled its promise yet. They have great electric wheel chairs and other adaptive technologies, but a real usable interface is still seemingly just around the corner. Except for a few early adopters of substantial means, of course.