When Facebook reinvented itself into Meta in October 2021, it was widely reported that Meta would be focusing on virtual reality by being at the forefront of the metaverse.
However, there is one dimension of AR wearables that developers of such devices tend to downplay or ignore altogether: it is eye tracking and what information related to the way we interact with the world through our gazes and eye movements are captured and analyzed. Modern eye trackers generally use a method known as corneal reflection, where a near-infrared light is used to illuminate the eyes, causing a reflection that is detected by a high resolution camera. Advanced image programming then identifies the point of gaze and the stimuli, making it possible to draw a heat map of where a person was looking in a given environment. In addition, data captured include pupil position, blinking patterns and eye movements.
It is easy to brush aside the issue by claiming that eye tracking is necessary for users to get the full benefit of AR. For example, Project Aria’s developers explain that for AR glasses to work, “they need to have a good sense of where you are, what you’re looking at, and what action you might want to take.”