Tobii and Qualisys Link Eye and Body Movement

Eye tracking solutions provider Tobii Pro and motion capture specialist Qualisys have integrated their technologies to provide combined analysis of eye and body movements.

Eye tracking data is collected with the Tobii Pro Glasses 2 wearable eye tracker, which provides wireless live view function, equipped with a wide-angle HD scene camera, microphone and four eye cameras taking up to 100 pictures per second. Markers are fitted to the body and onto the eye tracking glasses, and the cameras track and register the movement of the markers and translate them into a computer-generated 3D wire frame model.

According to the firms, the integration then makes it possible to stream data in real-time from both technologies into the Qualisys Track Manager (QTM) software. Here the data can be visualized and the eye tracking and gaze vector data can be exported to various other analysis software. As well as being used to understand what visual stimuli triggers body language, and to explore gesture-speech integration, the partnership will provide sports organisations with insights on athletes' hand-eye coordination; enable medical professionals to identify visuomotor disorders; and observe flight control simulation scenarios.

Tom Englund, President of Tobii Pro, says the two firms are already serving the same global customers, and the combined analysis of eye and body movements will provide an even deeper understanding of human behaviour. Morgan Larsson, Software Development Lead, Qualisys, adds: 'The natural relationship between motion capture and eye tracking technologies gives our customers a deeper understanding of the correlation between movement and gaze. This will improve performance, quality and safety in a wide variety of applications'.

Web sites: www.tobiipro.com and www.qualisys.com .