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Let Your Pupils Do the Typing
New submitter s.mathot writes: Researchers from France and the Netherlands have developed a way to—literally—write text by thinking of letters. (Academic paper [open access], non-technical blog, YouTube video.) This technique relies on small changes in pupil size that occur when you covertly (from the corner of your eye; without moving your eyes or body) attend to bright or dark objects. By presenting a virtual keyboard on which the 'keys' alternate in brightness, and simultaneously measuring the size of the eye's pupil, the technique automatically determines which letter you want to write; as a result, you can write letters by merely attending to them, without moving any part of your body, including the eyes.
I understand the confusion, but this technique does not rely on eye tracking in the sense of measuring eye position. It relies on measuring the size of the pupil, while the eyes don't move. So our technique is more comparable to so-called brain-computer interfaces than to conventional eye tracking. (Of course, eye tracking and similar devices (such as the cheek system used by Stephen Hawking) have been around for years, and if (eye) movement is possible, these are more efficient.)