In the future, changing the channel might be as easy as blinking with your eyes. Haier demonstrated a vision control system for TVs at the 2013 CES, showing how simple eye movements could take care of tasks like adjusting the volume, navigating through a media collection and even browsing a news feed. Take a look at the demo below:
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It’s worth pointing out that this was just a technology demonstration; Haier didn’t announce any plans to ship vision control-enabled devices any time soon. Still, it’s an interesting technology, which has seen considerable interest from startups and bigger companies alike.
Some are working on vision control with regular cameras, but Haier Product Specialist Kenji Higa told me that this leads to too many errors. That’s why Haier uses a specialized camera developed by Tobii.
The setup shown at CES required users to sit between one to three feet away from the eye tracking camera, but Higa said that the goal is to eventually have this work with distances of ten feet and more. That way, the sensors could simply be installed in the TV screen, and you could sit on your couch and interact with your TV just by rolling your eyes.
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