SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) was a German provider of dedicated computer vision applications with a major focus on

eye tracking Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research ...

technology. SMI was founded in 1991 as a spin-off from academic and medical research at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

. The company has its headquarters in

Teltow Teltow [] is a town in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district, in Brandenburg, Germany. Geography Teltow is part of the agglomeration of Berlin. The distance to the Berlin city centre is , while the distance to Potsdam is . The Teltow Canal links the ...

near

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, Germany, offices in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts and

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, California, in the United States, and a worldwide distributor and partner network. SMI provided eye tracking systems for scientific research, professional solutions and

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

applications. The eye trackers can be combined with motion tracking systems,

EEG Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...

, and other biometric data. They can be integrated into virtual reality

CAVEs A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

head-mounted displays A head-mounted display (HMD) is a display device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet (see Helmet-mounted display for aviation applications), that has a small display optic in front of one (monocular HMD) or each eye ( binocular HMD). An ...

such as

Google Glass Google Glass, or simply Glass, is a brand of smart glasses developed and sold by Google. It was developed by X (previously Google X), with the mission of producing an ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displays information to the wearer using ...

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, af ...

, simulators, cars, or computers as a measurement or interaction modality.

History

The company was founded by Dr. Winfried Teiwes in 1991. SMI's first system 3D VOG was employed by the

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

, the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

and on board of the Russian space station

Mir ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to&n ...

to analyze the effect of space missions on gravity-responsive torsional eye movements of astronauts. Gradually, the company shifted its focus from astronautics towards ophthalmology and scientific research. Dr. Teiwes remained the company's Managing Director until 2008, when Eberhard Schmidt took over this role. After the sale of the ENT productline to Interacoustics the diagnostics arm of William Demant Group in 2001, the spin-out of the retinal treatment activities into OD-OS in 2008, and the sale of the Ophthalmic division to Alcon in 2012, the company focused on scientific and professional eye tracking research solutions, virtual reality applications, and OEM integrations.

Technology and Products

The technology is based on the dark pupil and corneal reflection tracking: The cameras in the SMI eye trackers detect face, eyes, pupils, as well as the corneal reflections from the infrared light sources, and calculate eye movements, gaze direction and points of regard. The sampling frequency of the eye trackers ranges from 30 Hz up to the kHz range. On the hardware side, the company has three main product lines: mobile Eye Tracking Glasses (ETG), remote eye tracking systems (RED), and tower-mounted systems ( Hi-Speed). The software for experimental design and data analysis is called Experiment Suite and comes in different packages depending on the user's research interests.

Partnerships

At the 2014 Game Developers Conference, Sony unveiled the prototype InFamous: Second Son game for PlayStation 4, using SMI's RED-oem eye tracking system. At the CES 2016, SMI demoed a new 250 Hz eye tracking system and a working

foveated rendering Foveated rendering is a rendering technique which uses an eye tracker integrated with a virtual reality headset to reduce the rendering workload by greatly reducing the image quality in the peripheral vision (outside of the zone gazed by the fovea ...

solution. It resulted from a partnership with camera sensor manufacturer

Omnivision OmniVision Technologies Inc. is an American subsidiary of Chinese semiconductor device and mixed-signal integrated circuit design house Will Semiconductor. The company designs and develops digital imaging products for use in mobile phones, not ...

who provided the camera hardware for the new system. In 2015 DEWESoft together with SMI integrated the Eye Tracking Glasses into a driver machine monitoring and analysis platform for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). In 2014 Red Bull started using the Eye Tracking Glasses as part of their Red Bull Surf Science project. At the

Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tuto ...

2014,

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

unveiled the prototype of PlayStation 4 game Infamous: Second Son with the RED-oem eye tracking system integrated into it. In 2013 TechViz integrated SMI's 3D Eye Tracking Glasses wit
TechViz 3D visualization software
to enable eye tracking in a virtual reality

CAVE A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

. The 3D Eye Tracking Glasses were developed in partnership with Volfoni. In the same year, WorldViz started cooperating with SMI to enable calculation of intersects of gaze vectors with 3D objects and saving the data in one common database for deeper analysis.

German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (German: ''Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz'', DFKI) is one of the world's largest nonprofit contract research institutes for software technology based on artificial in ...

(DFKI) used the Eye Tracking Glasses to create Talking Places the prototype of an interactive city guide. In 2012, in partnership with

Emotiv Emotiv Inc. is a privately held bio-informatics and technology company developing and manufacturing wearable electroencephalography (EEG) products including neuroheadsets, software development kits (SDK), software, mobile apps, and data products. ...

SMI developed a software package that combined the EEG data from the

Neuroheadset with the eye tracking data. Neuromarketers can use this software to analyze consumer reactions to brands according to visual and emotional cues. Prentke Romich Company integrated SMI's NuEye eye-gaze accessory into its speech-generating platform for people with disabilities. The system allows users to control a communication device using only their eyes. Visual Interaction offers myGaze eye tracking accessory based on SMI technology with selected software packages for assistive applications.

Acquisition

It was reported that

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

acquired SMI in June 2017.

Awards

In 1992, SMI won the Berlin and Brandenburg Innovation Prize. In 2009, SMI's iView X RED system received the iF Product Design Award.

References