Facebook has acquired The Eye Tribe in a move that’ll likely see the Danish startup’s eye tracking technology being used to improve the virtual reality experience through Oculus. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the acquisition but declined to cite the terms of the deal.
Started in 2011 by four students from the IT University of Copenhagen, The Eye Tribe set out to make eye tracking more accessible to the masses. The company promises that it can enable eye control for consumer devices “that enables simplified and enhanced user experiences,” which makes it a good fit for Facebook’s Oculus division.
Rumors of The Eye Tribe’s acquisition came earlier this week through tech evangelist and pundit Robert Scoble.
The Eye Tribe started out with a developer-focused product, selling 10,000 units of its eye-tracking system to embed into hardware devices. It also has a consumer product line, and this year it launched a prosumer version called The Eye Tribe Tracker Pro for $199. This version lets anyone affix a device to a laptop or other computing machine to monitor your eye movement as you do whatever you have to do — Want to read sheet music on a monitor? Need to securely log into the computer? Scroll down a page? All of this are billed as feasible through The Eye Tribe.
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Source: Venture Beat