Eye-controlled laptop drops tedious mouse use

Those with shifty eyes might find the Lenovo/Tobii eye-controlled laptop a bit of a chore
Those with shifty eyes might find the Lenovo/Tobii eye-controlled laptop a bit of a chore

Touchscreens are old hat and motion sensors are passé. From now on, it's all about the eye-controlled laptop from Tobii and Lenovo.

That's right folks, it's a laptop that's controlled by your eyes.

Well, to a certain extent; Tobii's eye-control tech allows users to do things like select, point and scroll, things you'd traditionally do with a mouse or trackpad.

Potential

Tobii and Lenovo also say that the eye control system is easy and intuitive to use, and all you have to do is look at a widget to 'get more detail on it' rather than having to click it.

Presumably there's a system in place for when you're just glancing around at your screen, otherwise we can imagine it'd be pretty annoying to use.

We're obviously excited about this because we're incredibly lazy, but this kind of technology will be most useful for anyone with limited use of their hands – just think, if Jean-Dominique Bauby had had this kind of tech to play with, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly would have been much easier to write.

Unfortunately there are only 20 of these prototype eye-controlled notebooks around for now, with Tobii and Lenovo each taking ten to run tests, so there's no saying if or when they'll actually hit the market.

Via SlashGear

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Former UK News Editor for TechRadar, it was a perpetual challenge among the TechRadar staff to send Kate (Twitter, Google+) a link to something interesting on the internet that she hasn't already seen. As TechRadar's News Editor (UK), she was constantly on the hunt for top news and intriguing stories to feed your gadget lust. Kate now enjoys life as a renowned music critic – her words can be found in the i Paper, Guardian, GQ, Metro, Evening Standard and Time Out, and she's also the author of 'Amy Winehouse', a biography of the soul star.