Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 236 posts

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#221

Post by ladberg »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #215
ladberg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work on it and have spent tons of time in the headset. The eye tracking is next-level and it's really the only platform that exists with eye tracking as a primary input method. I'm pretty confident it will greatly improve your friend's quality of life. Because of that, I'm also sure that eye tracking will go mainstream in other areas once the Vision Pro is released once everyone else catches on to it as a g…

Is it doing something fundamentally different from what everyone else is doing (infrared light source, do some flavour of pupil segmentation and pose estimation)? Is the eye-tracking performance/accuracy step change on Apple's headset purely just a software/algo change? Or is it actually using a new principle/apparatus for eye-tracking?

I don't think there's anything revolutionary, just a lot of parts working very well in tandem:

- Multiple cameras per eye, and at a very short distance from your eye

- The screen is fixed relative to the cameras for all devices, there's no worry about that half of the equation getting off calibration or differing for every customer

- OS is built around eye tracking, which means there won't be any actions that are unnaturally hard to perform with eye tracking

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#222

Post by victorbjorklund »

lostmsu wrote: post #204
nocoiner wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about the Tobii glasses, but I have a Tobii head/eye tracker that attaches to my monitor, and it works incredibly well and was only $200 or so. I’d be surprised if this isn’t an essentially solved problem at this point.

I have the tracker too, but it is insufficient for my setup (multiple larger monitor).

Is it possible to use it with multiple monitors? I got 3 monitors but they are all laptop size and next to each other.

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#223

Post by TheHappyOddish »

lostdog wrote: post #157

I would love to hear pg's analysis of the business case for this company. By my math, 5k people in the US are diagnosed per year, and if your keyboard costs $1k, then your ARR is $5m, and maybe the company valuation is $50m. Numerically, this is pretty far from the goal of a typical YC company. I hate to be so cold-hearted about the calculations, but I've had a few friends get really passionate about assistive tech,…

You know the US is a tiny percentage of the worlds population, right? There's a much larger market out there.

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#224

Post by tim333 »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #179

And now if only someone funded an ALS cure... As far I know, I don't don't think mainstream medicine is close to solving _any_ chronic condition, except managing it.

A lot of past chronic diseases have had cures found. Leprosy and tuberculosis for example. ALS is a tricky one though, not well understood and quite likely prion like.

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#225

Post by [deleted] »

frenchman99 wrote: post #83
lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are unrelated topics. Not developing the technology is not going to help those kids’ quality of life.

But building it as we currently are is directly putting them at risk of poisoning, dying buried alive when their cobalt mining tunnels collapse, etc.

[deleted]

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#226

Post by mhb »

lostdog wrote: post #157

I would love to hear pg's analysis of the business case for this company. By my math, 5k people in the US are diagnosed per year, and if your keyboard costs $1k, then your ARR is $5m, and maybe the company valuation is $50m. Numerically, this is pretty far from the goal of a typical YC company. I hate to be so cold-hearted about the calculations, but I've had a few friends get really passionate about assistive tech,…

Before hearing the business case, it would be good to know what is already available and has been found wanting. There seem to be a lot of people saying that they have working systems of some kind.

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#227

Post by bacon_waffle »

follower wrote: post #210
bacon_waffle wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that was quick, thanks! Have imagined a music theory/improvisation practice program that looks something like Dasher + Guitar Hero.

# Topic 3: New Zealand is a small world I noticed from your profile that you're currently based in Dunedin and seem to quite like the place. :) Your location, interests & a mention on your site about the local Makerspace makes me think it's probably quite likely you know https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Taniwha / https://github.com/MoonbaseOtago ? (Who I haven't caught up with for ages but I see is doing some…

Yes, it is a small world after all! I'll email soon.

Sorry, my memory is pretty fuzzy, but here's a contemporary photo in case yours works better: https://icecube.wisc.edu/gallery/winterovers/#modulagallery-...

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#228

Post by bacon_waffle »

tsegratis wrote: post #193
jwm1 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like Dasher ( https://dasher.acecentre.net/about/ ), invented by the late David MacKay.

Nice. Random thought: Geometrically 50% of the movement does nothing (going left is a null action). In terms of distance moved by the pointer it would be more efficient to arrange the options as a circle around the pointer, with maybe the bottom 10% of the circle used for the null action A possible benefit is 90% of the screen could then be used to display a larger set of options, which could let the user bisect thei…

That is an interesting idea! The space of possible next characters expands polynomially, so as you say, the display might be better used with a polar grid compared to cartesian.

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#229

Post by Schwolop »

I'm consulting with an Australian group called Control Bionics. They have a US company & office, with CTO and sales team in Ohio, but software engineering is done in AU. Their primary product is an electromyography and accelerometer hardware device to detect muscle activations or movements, and then most commonly used as a mouse-click substitute in conjunction with third-party eye-gaze hardware proving the cursor. (I've also designed them an autonomous wheelchair module, but that's another story...)

@pg - If your friend has not tried adding a mouse-click via something they can activate other than eye-gaze, this would be worth a shot. We have a lot of MND patients who use our combination to great success. If they can twitch an eyebrow, wiggle a toe or a finger, or even flex their abdomen, we can put electrodes there and give them a way forward.

Also, my contact details are in my profile. I'd be happy to put you in touch with our CEO and I'm confident that offers of funding would be of interest. The company is listed on the Australian stock exchange, but could likely go much further with a direct injection of capital to bolster the engineering team.

Cheers, Tom

Re: If you're interested in eye-tracking, I'm interested in funding you

#230

Post by caspar »

As someone who suffered some severe mobility impairment a few years ago and relied extensively on eye tracking for just over a year, https://precisiongazemouse.org/ (Windows) and https://talonvoice.com/ (multiplatform) are great. In my experience the hardware is already surprisingly good, in that you get accuracy to within an inch or half an inch depending on your training. Rather, it's all about the UX wrapped around it, as a few other comments have raised.

IMO Talon wins* for that by supporting voice recognition and mouth noises (think lip popping), which are less fatiguing than one-eye blinks for common actions like clicking. The creator is active here sometimes.

(* An alternative is to roll your own sort of thing with https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly and other tools as I did, but it's a lot more effort)

Post reply on HN