Apple has made it into the news once again. Sources say the technology company has recently bought Germany-based research company, SensoMotoric Instruments. The research firm specializes in making eye-tracking devices, a set of specialized glasses that use eye tracking functioning. It has been used across diverse areas including athletics.
With a user base of 100,000, the company set up a website called eyetracking-glasses.com. Eye tracking is a new addition to the technology of virtual and augmented reality which will be extremely beneficial to immersive wearables.
Eye tracking technology embedded in headsets can be leveraged as a key element in the user interface, to map the point where a person is clicking in the virtual world with the actual point or area in the real world. This amazing technology can also be used to reduce the processing power and ease the task of rendering a thing in a virtual world more real.
Large enterprises have started investing heavily in wearable technology and driving innovation for virtual and augmented reality. This can be seen from last year’s acquisition of Eyefluence by Google. Eyefluence also specializes in eye-tracking technology, similar to the one recently acquired by Apple.
Companies have even started using eye-tracking technology. A start up in the field of augmented reality, Magic Leap, which recently raised $1.39 billion, uses eye tracking in its prototype headset.
Back to Apple, the company never confirmed a prototype headset, but has released some augmented reality tools for iPhone called the AR Kit. CEO Tim Cook has been all praise about the eye tracking technology in his recent public revelation. Further commenting on this, Cook mentioned that a time will come when AR will be a part of everyone’s daily life, just like three meals a day.
This acquisition is just another kitty in the bag for Apple, as it has already made number of acquisitions in the field of augmented reality including Metaio, PrimeSense, Faceshift, and FlyBy Media.
Anirudh M. for TechFunnel.com
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