Review your gadget: Lenovo and Tobii unveil eye-controlled laptop at CeBIT event

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Lenovo and Tobii unveil eye-controlled laptop at CeBIT event

via Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women by becca on 3/7/11

The world's first laptop to be integrated with innovative eye-control technology was unveiled at the digital trade show CeBIT in Germany last week.

The laptop is a collaboration between computer manufacturer Lenovo, and Tobii, a Swedish company that specialises in eye tracking technology.

It's not possible to control every function with just your eyes, but you can point, select and scroll, which is still pretty impressive and groundbreaking!

Unfortunately, the laptops aren't available to the general public quite yet, there are just a few prototypes running on Windows 7 that those attending CeBIT were able to play around with.

It's interesting to read that Tobii will be looking to integrate its technology into more consumer products in the future. Barabara Barclay, General Manager of Tobii in North America said on the Tobii website:

"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."

Not only does this kind of technology have huge implications for making devices easier to use and therefore work and play more streamlined, it could have a big impact on people with disabilities, who are not able to use regular computers and more traditional input methods.

Up until now there have been specially designed devices and software for those living with disabilities, from state-of-the-art voice activated programs to laptops like the BT Balance, which is hand-held and can be operated with just a few small movements instead of relying on a mouse or keyboard.

However, even more research and development is currently taking place to make technology accessible to everyone and really push boundaries. For instance, researchers at Microsoft are currently using Kinect technology to work on gesture control, which means devices may soon be controlled by independent movements that require no interaction with hardware at all, this again could be life-changing in more ways than one.

Via ZDNet.