[LINK] eye scrolling

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Samsung’s next smartphone, to be introduced this month, will have a strong 
focus on software. A person who has tried the phone, called the Galaxy S 
IV, described one feature as particularly new and exciting: Eye scrolling.

The phone will track a user’s eyes to determine where to scroll, said a 
Samsung employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not 
authorized to speak to the news media. 

For example, when users read articles and their eyes reach the bottom of 
the page, the software will automatically scroll down to reveal the next 
paragraphs of text.

Indeed, Samsung in January filed for a trademark in Europe for the name 
“Eye Scroll” (No. 011510674). It filed for the “Samsung Eye Scroll” 
trademark in the United States in February, where it described the service 
as “Computer application software having a feature of sensing eye movements 
and scrolling displays of mobile devices, namely, mobile phones, 
smartphones and tablet computers according to eye movements; digital 
cameras; mobile telephones; smartphones; tablet computers.”

Samsung has also filed for the trademark “Eye Pause,” without describing 
what the feature does.

In an interview, Kevin Packingham, Samsung’s chief product officer, 
declined to share details about Samsung’s next phone. But he said he 
disagreed that the new hardware would be insignificant compared with the 
software, and over all, “It’s an amazing phone.”

Eye tracking systems have been in development for a while. Samsung’s 
current flagship phone, the Galaxy S III, already has a feature that 
watches you. The feature, Smart Stay, uses its front-facing camera to know 
to keep the screen lit up when a person is looking at it instead of dimming 
it automatically.

Tobii, a technology company that received $21 million in funding from Intel 
last year, has been working on a technique that uses infrared sensors to 
track precise eye movements.

<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/samsungs-new-smartphone-will-
track-eyes-to-scroll-pages/>

Cheers,
Stephen