Swedish tech company Tobii and Synaptics are working together to create new and exciting ways to control and navigate our computers. The two companies have now teamed up and presented an ultrabook concept that can be controlled through eye motions and pressure sensitive touch technology.
Tobii contributes with its renowned interface Gaze UI that registers eye motions and allows users to control and navigate user interfaces by simply looking at what you want to activate. While the technology can be used together with eye blinks to simulate mouse clicks and other activities Tobii has realized it is more convenient with physical input up top.
This is where Synaptics comes in and the company has many years of experience in making e.g. trackpads for notebooks. Synaptics has baked in its coming pressure sensitive trackpad Forcepad into a new ultrabook concept that together with Gaze UI shows how you can control a notebook with just your eyes and touches with varied force. Forcepad can handle up to 1,000 gram of force and can recognize 64 different pressure levels to control different functions based on how hard you push into the pad.
Tobii in turn says Gaze is the future for both user interfaces and games where you can move around naturally by simply looking at the objects you want to interact with to gain an augmented user experience.
Through the new ultrabook concept Tobii and Synaptics has shown that this technology can be baked into current thin formfactors without any visible drawbacks. How and when we will get to see Gaze and Forcepad in consumers products is unclear, but the companies hopes to gain the attention of PC makers in the second half of this year.
