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New Display Keeps an Eye On the Viewer

Posted by Soulskill on from the apparently-it-watches-the-watchers dept.

Al writes "Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) have developed an OLED display that doubles as a camera. The idea is to use it in lightweight heads-up displays that track users' eye movements, affording some form of gaze-control. The researchers will demonstrate a prototype at the Society for Information Display conference in San Antonio this week. The current version has a simple monochromatic display: it is 1.25 centimeters on each side, with a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels. The team at Fraunhofer IPMS has also partnered with Novaled, an OLED company that manufactures high-quality white diodes, and plans to make color prototypes using the technology."

11 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Paranoia! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Any idea the current price on tinfoil glasses?

    1. Re:Paranoia! by master5o1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I just made a few now. In fact, I'm now working on a complete mask+hat+glasses combo. I'm going to be so safe now!

      --
      signature is pants
  2. reversal by underqualified · · Score: 4, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, screen watches you!

    1. Re:reversal by inviolet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In Soviet Russia, screen watches you!

      You laugh, but this invention is important. Video-phones cannot catch on without it, because humans require eye contact in order to trust each other. You can't have eye contact over a video-phone unless your camera is also your monitor.

      --
      FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
  3. Eye tracking glasses by mrjb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1.25 centimeters- that's half an inch. Perhaps a bit too small yet for use in a monitor- but probably reasonably easy to scale up to the size of a pair of glasses. Incorporating a camera display on the inside of a pair of glasses would make eye tracking much simpler, and reduce any privacy concerns- Even if someone would be watching along with the video stream being captured by the glasses, all there would be to see would be eye movements.

    --
    Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
  4. Typo in summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    usersl

    The "l" is on the wrong side.

    -- BOFH

  5. Apple might have a patent for this... by distantbody · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...They submitted a patent application for something like this in January 2006 see here. Personally I would prefer to use a discreet webcam.

  6. Prototype, eh? by iamdrscience · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The camera in the researchers' current prototype is still fairly rudimentary. It has a resolution of only 12 pixels, which means that it can't yet track a user's eye movements.

    In other news, I have made a prototype flying car in my garage. It doesn't fly yet, but I have put some stylish looking fins on it.

    1. Re:Prototype, eh? by moon3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Fraunhofer guys invented MP3 compression, this German think tank do have results..

      Also this is proof of concept. It doesn't really matter whether the resolution is 12 or 1024.

  7. Oh goody... by Calmaveth · · Score: 2, Informative

    It seems they've invented the Telescreen... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen

  8. Has been being researched for a while by tomalpha · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember doing work experience at Philips Research Labs back in the mid nineties and they were working on a similar concept back then - a monitor that doubled as a flatbed scanner. It was based on an lcd monitor, with small gaps between pixels to allow light to pass through to the scanner at the back. The big challenges were getting the focal depth right, and avoiding refraction(?) patterns after the light had passed through the screen portion.

    They seemed to have gotten roung that problem by placing the photoreceptors and lcd pixels at the same level. Can't wait to see a monitor sized one.