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 Since John Elvesjo noticed a sensor tracking his eye movements in a
lab experiment, the technology he developed with Henrik Eskilsson
and Marten Skogo has helped disabled people use a computer by
identifying where they are looking on the screen.
The system uses invisible infra-red light to illuminate the eyes.
Camera sensors capture the reflection off the retina and cornea to
gauge where the eye is, and where it is looking.
The mass-market potential looks almost limitless. Advertisers could
adapt billboard images depending on where you rest your gaze. A car
could alert you when you're about to fall asleep. Eskilsson says eye
tracking will one day be found in all laptops, smartphones, tablets
and automobiles.
First up is the computer gaming hardware market. As a player looks
to one part of the screen, the image will pan across the landscape
and open up a new field of vision.
Whether it catches on in the fiercely competitive gaming industry
could depend on a deal struck this year between Eskilsson's company
Tobii and Ubisoft, maker of blockbuster game "Assassin's Creed:
Rogue".
Tracking the player's gaze, the eyes of warrior Shay Patrick Cormac
look across seascapes, forts and battlefields as he hunts assassins
in North America during the Seven Years War in the PC version of the
game.
The success of this and other tie-ins is the biggest test yet for
Tobii, which is making no revenue from supplying its technology for
the deal.
The aim is to get enough players interested to lure other gaming
companies for deals that would bring in revenue. So far it has a
handful of other tie-ins and Eskilsson said eye-tracking will have
to reach at least 30 to 50 games before it can be regarded as
mainstream.
The prize is huge: Tobii's sales ambitions suggest an overall market
for gaming eye-tracking sensors that could top $5 billion a year in
revenue, about six times the firm's market value.
"Eye-tracking makes it possible to create a more human device," said
Eskilsson at Tobii's Stockholm headquarters, his laptop slipping
into standby mode after noticing that he had looked away.
"Not only by steering with your eyes, but with hands, voice and
where you are looking. All put together."
SMARTPHONE HURDLES
The company faces further hurdles before it can break into the far
larger smartphone market.
Fund manager Inge Heydorn at Sentat Asset Management in Stockholm
compared Tobii's gaming-focused business to a hard-to-value stock
option and said its sensors must become cheaper and smaller and
consume less energy if they are to be used for smartphones packing
far less battery power than laptops.
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"They don't know if they will get power consumption down. We don't
know. Nobody knows," said Heydorn, who holds no Tobii stock.
Tobii dominates the market for now - its $75 million in 2014 sales
is five times that of its closest rival among about 20 eye-tracking
technology firms - by selling sensors as disability aids and for
behavioural studies in research.
Keeping that edge may prove a challenge now that big technology
firms, some of them Tobii customers, are looking at whether to
develop their own technology.
South Korean giant Samsung's latest phone reads the position of the
user's face, something Eskilsson sees as a precursor to full-blown
eye tracking.
Tobii's deep-pocketed backers include Swedish group Investor, with a
19 percent stake, Intel Capital and early Spotify investor Northzone,
both with roughly 8 percent.
Expectations for profit growth are sky-high and Tobii's share price
has almost tripled since its April listing. The company is investing
about 150 million Swedish crowns ($18 million) annually to expand in
PC gaming.
"It's going to take a couple of years for that to become a volume
market. It's not 10 years away, but within a couple of years," said
Eskilsson.
Hans Otterling at third-biggest shareholder Northzone said Tobii was
"totally capable" of carrying on by itself, without being swallowed
by a bigger company. He said its value lay in the range of areas
where eye-tracking may be applied.
"Imagine a surgeon, his hands free, able to steer things with his
eyes. There is really just your imagination setting the limits," he
said.
(Editing by Niklas Pollard, Tom Pfeiffer and Pravin Char)
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