Tobii and Lenovo tout eye-controlled laptop

Tobii Technology and Lenovo announced today the world’s first integrated eye-controlled laptop. That means that instead of a mouse or trackpad, you will be able to use your eyes to select, scroll and navigate through you’re the computer’s interface. COOL.

Tobii originally created its eye tracking technology for the individuals unable to speak or write. The company has also deployed eye-tracking software in hospitals, diagnostics, vehicle safety, gaming, and now personal computing.

Lenovo and Tobii say that having an eye-controlled laptop means users can glance at an icon to open it or at an ad to get more information. By staring at a picture of map you can zoom in without having to click and the computer can automatically recognize when to auto-dim or brighten based on your eyes and battery life.

Eye control can also speed up the user experience, making it super quick to jump between windows.

No doubt that will certainly take some getting used to. My question is, for those of us who have extreme ADD and can’t focus on one thing at a time, will it mean work suicide with constant jumping from window-to-window, minimizing and maximizing windows, looking at images, all while trying to finish up some work?

Seems like the system will either require extreme focus or it will revolutionize the speed in which we do work and process information.

“We anticipate that people will be extremely excited to be able to control their computer with their eyes,” explained Barbara Barclay, general manager of Tobii North America.

“But what we find most exciting are the opportunities that eye control as part of natural user interfaces offer consumer electronics manufacturers in a range of product categories. We look forward to working with our partners to find many exciting ways to share and integrate this technology to advance their work.”