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Long Range Eye Tracking for Advertisers
holy_calamity writes "A Canadian firm has launched a device that can track the gaze of multiple people from up to 10 metres away. Originally developed at Queen's University, Ontario, they hope to sell it to advertisers to allow them to monitor how many people look at their ads. Admittedly they are trying more benign stuff too like better hearing aids, but I doubt that will make up for movie posters that make a song and dance whenever you glance their way."
They will be able to tell where I'm looking. Advertisers, Law Enforcement, that hot chick on the underground...
Damn
This needs to replace the mouse. Give me this and Supreme Commander and I will... have fun.
Clearly pirates are impervious
1. "Honestly honey, I was not looking at her breasts and that camera is a lying snitch".
2. "Hey Bob, couldn't help to notice that you were staring at your crotch. Could I interest you in a Corvette?"
3. "PLEASE PULL UP YOUR PANTS".
"Mr Yamamoto?"
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
we'll just be living in it.
I hope some privacy groups outlaw this. I understand that being in public means you're open to any prying eyes about how you're dressed, which direction you're heading in or even the things to say to other people in the open. But tracking eye movement? I`m not sure if that feels "ok" with me... It's common understanding that even in public your "thoughts" are private and your own.. wouldn't it also apply to what your mind decides to look at?..
If I decide to sneak a peak at an ad that shows a gay couple.. or shows an ad on how to deal with drug addiction.. will I be labeled as a gay drug addict to that/those companies?
Maybe I should take off my tin foil hat for a bit and get some fresh air.. hopefully I`m just over reacting.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Are you looking at me?
I'm sure Travis Bickle would have something to say about this...
I hope they don't start building these devices into women's clothing.
just a low-tech thought... But where will I find a pair that don't clash with my tinfoil hat?
they're called moms.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Advertisers need to end their delusions, they must realize that they nearly killed the internet, and are in the process of killing TV.
The reason people do not like your advertisements is because advertising is ANNOYING. We, the Anonymous Internet Horde, will bury you. You can track our gaze, you can show us all the colors in the rainbow including some new ones, but you will not sell us anything. You are finished as an industry.
Admittedly they are trying more benign stuff too like better hearing aids
Am I the only one who didn't understand that statement? Probably.
I'd rather see this technology used to track my focus on the desktop.
If I were them, I'd make it so they moved more when you looked away - causing you to look back.
In all seriousness though, this technology is a little creepy. Not only that, but tracking eye movement has to have better applications than simply refining the process of ad targeting.
See Mom, I told you I have good reasons for not going outside.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You know the shows you like to watch are paid for by the advertisers. You need to do your civic duty and watch them. Also buy at least one product from the ads you watch each week. We'll make sure you do.
God spoke to me.
OMG. Those creepy eyes in the portrait ARE following me!
I hereby coin the phrase "ass click"
One way this technology could be used is to pay per view. ie. Freelance advertisers put up display ads and get paid per view. A bit like Google ads in the physical world.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The eye jumps around fairly randomly every 1/10 of a second or so. This jumping actually helps to produce your peripheral vision. Now what about Laser Eye surgery? They fire a laser beam to remove bits of your eye. Of course, if the eye was moving about, then they'd actually be removing wrong bits of the eye. This was identified several years ago, and is now corrected with eye-tracking technology. The laser only fires when the eye is not jumping around.
... cross your eyes.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
And you thought thinking that the eyes of 6 foot picture of some dead guy following you was weird when you moved throughout the house... wait until heritage pictures meet this new technology.
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Marketing is one of the most obnoxious influences in modern history, perhaps only lawyers and religion are as destructive.
There are people like engineers, programmers, farmers, teachers, machinists, etc, who do productive work. These people *create* goods and services. They *generate* stuff that people enjoy, the result of their work is more than the input.
What marketing does to their customer is, if everything goes well, to increase market share, which means another corporation loses an equivalent market share. Marketing generates nothing. The result of marketing is always less than the input.
In Soviet Russia, movie posters watch YOU!
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
Now you don't have to wear the heavy helmet to aim and shoot in an apache.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Well, they could do it the low tech way and just use this optical illusion, instead.
Great fun to print out. Freaks people out if they don't understand the trick ("Look at this new e-paper! Cool, huh?")
Such devices already exist. They're called tits.
Have gnu, will travel.
You could also build it into an anti-personnel mine for battlefield use.
Imagine it sitting there quietly until people come across it. If it thinks it's not discovered, it's dormant, unless someone gets right up on it. But if someone looks while nearby, the element of surprise is blown anyway, so booooom. In fact, you could adapt it to make imagery like glinting metal with a tiny projector, when they're nearby, so they're drawn to it.
Hey... it's no worse than making bomblets that look like kids' toys. Though I'm sure if they do this, someone will have the projector pump out little happy cartoon characters.
Get off my launchpad!
In Japan, there is a similar project studying whether eye tracking can be used to see how well people follow a virtual reality presentation. The idea is that if your gaze wanders off, then you lost track, and the presentation backtracks a bit to gain your attention again.
;-)
The tool needed extensive calibration and only works reliably for people who do not wear glasses. So I think the technology is still a bit away from everyday commercial use.
Even when not wearing glasses, the tool is not very precise. The demo had a male and female speaker. When I tried it, the male presenter complained that I was distracted by looking at the window next to the girl. Of course I was not distracted by the view of the landscape, but by the girl
... Viagra ads that loudly mock guys who glance nervously at them. And maybe add a little image recognition. Then your billboard can shout out, "Hey everybody, that bald guy in the suit over there can't get it up. Hahaha!" Nothing like a little peer pressure to get somebody to buy your product :-)
My bicyles
What does it look like and how can I destroy it?
If a poster rests on a wall and no one is there to see it, does it sing and dance?
The only thing I want is a poster that will give me the thumbs-up whenever I walk by.
From a Computerworld interview with Roel Vertegaal, the researcher responsible for the technology:
Although Vertegaal ruled out the marriage of the eyebox2 technology with retina scanners or image capturing devices, he conceded the possibility was out there and warned that if customers chose to combine the eyebox2 technology with other image capturing devices, there was little his company could do about it.
"[Already], face recognition software is being used in Europe to track shopping mall theft," he said. "While we do not encourage such use, and given that our cameras cannot identify people or provide images, it still seems these directions are already being taken by other companies regardless of our hardware."
Time to research that "distinctive IR signature " of human eyes, and replicate it in hardware, then mount some opposite every such billboard.
This sort of device will not be tolerated by me or my species.
I firmly believe that advertisers should be put on a secluded island so they can fight to the death.
They're using their grammar skills there.
One day, someone will have the great idea that pedophiles could be caught using this technology. They'll surely pay attention to groups of children, their eye movement will reveal that they'll look back when their gaze tracks over a bunch of kids... Anything to catch the pedophiles, right? Since only pedophiles have to fear this, it could also track when people are suspiciously and unnaturally looking AWAY from the children. That would mean they're thinking about them, paying attention to them by looking away. They must be pedos, too!
Remember this next time you see a bunch of school kids on the streets. In the future, police might come knocking on your door asking questions about what it was that interested you when you took such a long glance at them...
They could use the technology for applications like this.
How does Philip K. Dick feel about this? We can only hope he can prevent this tech^H^H^H^Hatrocity from coming to the US by filing some kind of lawsuit citing prior art.
Where are the precogs? Who's writing the pre-crime legislation? Is the Gap salivating at the thought of a worldwide exclusive license to this atrocity?
...like Jack Sparrow the tribal king.
I once had a signature.
for this technology: Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play music in women's breast implants. The iBreast will cost $499 to $599. This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women are always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them. Imagine if, everytime you looked at a breast, it played music!
How long do you think it will be before they incorporate this into DVDs so your movie won't play until they are sure you've watched every second of the ads? Oh don't worry, we'll pause while you blink. Maybe rewind a little bit.
IOU one (1) signature
You should see the movie "Looker".. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker & http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/
scrapetorrent search for Looker torrent http://tinyurl.com/2rzte2
It's all about advertising and other evil goals.
They develop a technique to track viewers eye movements and a computer helps them improve the commercials to maximize profits by modifying the models (plastic surgery) and hypnotizing the viewers. And all that crap.
And then they use the technique to try to take over the government. Pretty deep stuff for 1981.
already been done: http://www.warren.usyd.edu.au/bulletin/NO49/ed49ar t3.htm, http://nicta.com.au/uploads/documents/060915_audie nceresponse_casestudy.pdf
Your fingerprints were on it, you must have been there and done it, right?
A few years ago someone invented a system that can recreate what you can see in your field of view from the reflections in your eyes as seen in a photo. Extend these technologies to CCTV, and now the police can "prove" you could see something. "Prove" you knew. Except, we miss things all the time, even right in front of us...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
wow I guess in the future everyone will be wearing silver tinted / tin shades
(along with the standard issue tin foil hat)
...Government watches you
Eclipse PDE and Me
If word gets out that people have conditioned themselves to ignore your obtrusive and annoying advertising, and that your multi-million dollar setup in Times Square isn't making people buy any more than otherwise as evidenced by how little people are actually looking at compared to what you expect, your business model will crumble.
Not that some of you guys don't deserve unemployment.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Lets see,
1 - Grandpa looks at the victorias secret billboard
2 - camera sees that he sees
3 - camera tells hearing aid to tell grandpa that he needs to visit the store
4 - grandpa misunderstands and pisses on the store
Whose fault?
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
You really don't want to do it unless it's absolutely necessary. First off, yeah, the eye moves around a lot, so you need big targets on screen. Second, at this point it's still very finicky - prepate to sit perfectly still and try and visually navigate a screen.
Most importantly, it completely breaks when there's movement on screen, since we instinctively track movement. I played pong with an eyetracker - as long as the paddle moves as fast as the ball you're fine, since all you have to do is watch the ball. Once the ball moves faster, you're screwed, since you have to anticipate the ball's movement as it bounces off a wall but in order to track the ball you end up moving towards the wall with the ball and not away from it.
In other words, if it can't handle the complexity of Pong in dynamic environments, it's unlikely to do well unless used with great subtlety on a computer system (i.e. opening a drop-down when you're looking at it instead of having the user click on the heading).
is there really any doubt that technology is bringing these types of tailored and targeted ads to us sooner than we expected? With holographic technology advancing we will soon have airvertising similar to what we saw in Minority report. Is this a good or bad thing? It's all a matter of perspective I suppose.
in soviet russia eyes track you!
on the other hand, nothing to see hear, wear sunglasses and move along.
ps: oh, and imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
a short step to reading visual, aural and kinaesthetic a la NLP? Still, it'll be enjoyable to see what Adbusters come up with.