The X1 Light eye tracker is a truly portable lab, that you can literally fit into your laptop bag and test in situ, wherever and whenever you want. With device stands for both desktop, screen based, laptop based and real world testing this is a hugely flexible piece of equipment for market research, usability and more. There is plenty of information on our website about the X1 Light here : http://www.acuity-ets.com/products_x1-series.htm and you can also see an introduction video here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B1r3xuqDck

The X1 Light can be used with the free of charge Morae plug-in for usability studies or you can use it with Tobii Studio, the most popular eye tracking analysis software in the world!

For more information, specifications and pricing please don’t hesitate to contact sales@acuity-ets.com .

Why have we been so quiet? Well we have been putting together the final touches on Acuity Intelligence, our sister company who can be found on www.acuity-intelligence.com where we will be looking at more integration of hardware and software across a wide range of disciplines such as biometrics, analytics, motion capture and more! Check it out or get in touch!

General fixes : There have been a number of stability and resource issues addressed in line with updating the database type to accommodate the new data from the biggest new feature in 3.0 – dynamic areas of interest.

New text export tool : For customers who like to play with the raw data and export data sets to packages such as SPSS, Matlab, R and so on there is a much more flexible and powerful text export tool. Not only do you have more data sets to choose from, you can also create templates of the reports you like and save them for future use – much as you can do with the fixation filter settings since the update in 2.3.

Remote viewer (Enterprise edition) : The old Studio Remote Logger has been replaced with a sleeker, more stable remote viewer. Unfortunately the logger functionality has gone – however it has been replaced with a better, solid, lightweight viewer that has much better buffering and stability across a network – sending user cameras, screen data, gaze data and mouse interactions over a network.

Dynamic areas of interest : Areas of interest now have a life of their own! You can reshape, resize and move areas of interest to compensate or track movement in videos, web pages, Glasses recordings and more – the powerful tools allow you to quickly manipulate the AOI as you wish, press a button and get your statistics for the dynamic interaction, or indeed group them together using the AOI tools to get data aggregated across all sorts and types of stimuli!

Along with all these features there are also some visual changes to the GUI and a few little bits and pieces which all add up to a great update for the worlds market leading eye tracking software! See the data sheets for more information or contact us on sales@acuity-ets.com to find out more!

Studio 3.0 Brochure – Academic Research

Studio 3.0 Brochure – Commercial Research

But the TV show didn’t allow us to demonstrate the full capabilities of the Dikablis system, which is designed not only for eye tracking but also integration to other software platforms, research tools and custom interfaces. Not only does the Dikablis allow fully wireless transmission and live viewing of data up to 5km away (designed from inception for testing vehicles and ergonomics during real world scenarios) but we can also synchronise the data stream to any number of input devices. The SimLab driving simulator takes things a step further, with a choice of screen sizes and types you can create VR worlds and eye track drivers as they navigate, drive and interact with the vehicle. On top of this every key switch, button press and acceleration is logged, marked and tied together allowing you to accurately plot every aspect of the users behaviour.

For other types of experiment, such as gait monitoring, sports studies and environmental testing we can look at the D-Control interface. This allows us to add 4 additional video streams to the eye tracking data, so this could be different views of the participants, different elements the user will interact with or perhaps different views of a cricketers approach to bowl?

But we aren’t finished there…. we can also utilise the Dikablis system with the Vicon motion capture system, as seen tracking Ronaldo in the TV show and as seen in this demonstration video here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqVynnEXpY8 … so as well as having multiple views of the participant filmed by traditional cameras, we can also monitor every aspect of their body motion, limb movement and add accurate eye gaze as well. The possibilities for sports science and medical research are endless, and also what about for CGI and standard motion capture where eye gaze has been “guesstimated” in the past – we can now say with 100% certainty where they were gazing as they ran, walked, tackled and interacted.

The Dikablis has a very open API which can stream data live, so the options don’t end there either – you can integrate the system into your own systems, your own code and your own research. Give us a call on +44 (0) 1189 000795 or email us at sales@acuity-ets.com for more details or to request a demo.

Recently we were asked by a TV production company to discuss an opportunity about eye tracking a footballer, I was pretty shocked when the opportunity turned out to be eye tracking the world’s most expensive footballer in Madrid – Cristiano Ronaldo.

For an upcoming TV show called “Tested To The Limit” commissioned by one of his sponsors, Castrol, Ronaldo went through a number of tests to find out just why he is so good, and better than other players on the pitch! He undertook sprint challenges, took free kicks, demonstrated his jumping capabilities and of course we eye tracked him as well! The eye tracking part of the day took place when Andy Ansah (of Tekkers fame) and Ronaldo went head to head on the pitch and we eye tracked both of them as Ronaldo showed off his moves.

Just after filming finished Ronaldo (or at least his PR people!) tweeted this image of Cristiano wearing the Dikablis wireless eye tracker – I was sworn to secrecy so couldn’t tweet, blog or text! Although my claim to fame is that is my hand you can see in the corner of the image!

The Dikablis was ideal for the type of testing as we were able to have both of the players running freely, while we watched live their eye movements on the two laptops at the control desk to make instant observations. As the Dikablis system allows for the field camera lens to be changed (giving us a different field of view) and adjusted (so we could focus more on the lower half of the field of vision) we were able to capture some incredible data! I would love to tell you more but my lips are sealed until after the show goes out…. then look out for more of the story behind my two days locked inside a hangar!

Sky Sports 2HD are running the program exclusively on Thursday 8th September at 9pm, and there was a quick preview (blink and you may miss me!) on Sky Sports recently which you can watch back here : http://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,26691,20450_7153767,00.html

To download the latest version you need to have a valid support contract and go to HELP > CHECK FOR UPDATES within Studio. If you haven’t got a valid support contract get in touch on sales@acuity-ets.com and we can discuss your options… Studio 2.4 is scheduled for release at the end of the year, so keep your eyes out for that as well!

Please note Studio 2.3 is NOT compatible with X50, 1750 and 2150 eye trackers.

When comparing eye trackers first ask yourself a few questions about the performance data you have in front of you, and ask the manufacturer for more information on how they came to the quoted numbers, how their system performs in different conditions and if they can’t answer the questions – maybe ask yourself why? Tobii are leading the market with this initiative, will other manufacturers follow?

Follow the link here : http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/about-tobii/eye-tracking/test-method/ to see more about the methods and also the first reports for the Tobii T60XL.

IMPORTANT : Studio 2.3 is currently not compatible with users of 1750, 2150 or X50 eye trackers.