New Smart Recorder Connects SMI's Eye Tracking Glasses to Daily Life Scenarios

TELTOW, Germany, September 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) today introduces a new smart recorder for SMI's leading Eye Tracking Glasses (ETG). The lightweight device based on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 adds more freedom of movement and mobile connectivity options to daily life research and application scenarios. It captures eye gaze data of consumers, athletes, patients and other users allowing them to naturally perform their tasks at hand. With its live trigger support, the smart recorder allows for easy synchronization of visual attention with biometrics, motion tracking and other external data streams with no compromise on mobility. The wireless SDK for online data access also makes SMI's Eye Tracking Glasses the perfect eye tracking platform for custom, multi-sensor applications.

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150916/267133 )

SMI Eye Tracking Glasses are designed to capture a person's gaze in a natural environment, e.g. in a supermarket, at a work place or in other daily life scenarios. Via wireless control from a remote computer, operators can observe live gaze traces in a scene video and add live annotations on a user's behaviour. Now, the slim and lightweight ETG smart recorder with a local user interface and full wireless data access makes mobile eye tracking even easier to implement in stand-alone as well as in multi-sensor scenarios.

As the research on emotional and cognitive engagement of consumers, users or trainees is moving into real-world scenarios, researchers seek to integrate various sensors into multimodal scenarios. With the mobile connectivity of the ETG smart recorder, they can even better use SMI's Eye Tracking Glasses in combination with EEG, GSR, NIRS, heart rate or others in mobile settings. The same applies to sports scientists seeking to analyze eye and body movements in order to understand athletes' performance. Also, mobile gaze and motion data helps medical professionals to advance behavioral and neurological diagnosis and rehabilitation.

Developers can easily access SMI's enhanced wearable eye tracking platform and integrate mobile eye tracking data in custom applications and sensor networks via the SMI SDK. SMI's wireless SDK feeds a real-time stream of gaze, pupil data and eye tracking video into connected applications. Wireless logging of incoming trigger messages supports synchronization with events in other data streams. To facilitate synchronization, SMI plug-ins are available for standard communication protocols such as Lab Streaming Layer or VRPN. The SMI ETG also supports multisensory research with specific application modules.

Sascha Tamm und Aleksander Heider, Free University of Berlin: "We used SMI Eye Tracking Glasses with the new smart recorder to analyze visual planning strategies of talents from the Alba Berlin basketball youth team. In a team training scenario, the point guard could naturally handle the ball though wearing the eye tracking equipment. And we could even follow the live gaze trails of the player remotely via a wireless connection."

Achim Wager, Project Coordinator AICASys at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg: "The AICASys project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has the goal of developing an intuitive control system for smart building automation. The system uses SMI Eye Tracking Glasses to capture the natural gaze behavior of people in an intelligent home environment. The new ETG smart recorder connects the eye tracker to our control system and enables users to steer electronic devices in their surroundings just using the eyes. The technical concept may also benefit similar applications in industry, traffic and medical applications."

Magnus Berlander, CTO at Qualisys: "We decided to add eye tracking data to our motion capture software, Qualisys Track Manager, because it allows our customers to gain a better understanding of the interplay of visual information input, human motion, cognitive skills and learning. The available motion tracking interface of SMI Eye Tracking Glasses facilitated the integration and enabled us to come up with a plug&play solution easy to use even for non-technical users."

Dr. Arnd Rose, Product Manager, SensoMotoric Instruments: "Multisensory research was often tied to the lab or other settings involving bulky equipment. The new smart recorder for the widely used SMI Eye Tracking Glasses brings the approach to real-world and mobile settings. The ETG system is in fact a common pair of glasses with a smartphone. Due to this form factor it does not interfere with everyday tasks and offers endless possibilities to our professional and academic research customers and developers."

SMI's leading wearable eye tracking technology is being used by leading innovators, such as Google, Samsung and Intel and renowned institutions, e.g. University of California at Berkeley, Max Planck Institute and Perception Research Services. The SDK has been proven with custom integrations by leading industry partners such as WorldViz and Qualisys, and by scientific labs such as the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence.

About SMI 

SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) is a world leader in eye tracking technology, developing and marketing eye & gaze tracking for scientists and professionals, OEM and medical solutions for a wide range of applications. Find out more at http://www.smivision.com. Follow @SMIeyetracking on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

Media Contacts
SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (SMI)
Stefanie Gehrke
+49-(0)-172-3808-537
[email protected]

SOURCE SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (SMI)