SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI)[1] was a German provider of dedicated computer vision applications with a major focus on
eye-tracking technology. SMI was founded in 1991 as a spin-off from academic and medical research at the
Free University of Berlin. The company has its headquarters in
Teltow near
Berlin, Germany, offices in
Boston, Massachusetts and
San Francisco, California, in the United States, and a worldwide distributor and partner network.
The company was founded by Dr. Winfried Teiwes in 1991.[12] SMI's first system 3D VOG was employed by the
ESA, the
NASA and on board the Russian space station
Mir to analyze the effect of space missions on gravity-responsive torsional eye movements of astronauts.[13] 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,[14] the spin-out of the retinal treatment activities into OD-OS in 2008,[15] and the sale of the Ophthalmic division to
Alcon in 2012,[16][17] the company focused on scientific and professional eye tracking research solutions[buzzword], 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, and 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),[18][19][20] remote eye tracking systems (RED),[21][22][23] 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.[24]
At the CES 2016, SMI demoed a new 250 Hz eye tracking system and a working
foveated rendering solution.[buzzword] It resulted from a partnership with camera sensor manufacturer
Omnivision who provided the camera hardware for the new system.[25]
In 2013 TechViz integrated SMI's 3D Eye Tracking Glasses[32][33] with
TechViz 3D visualization software to enable eye tracking in a virtual reality
CAVE. The 3D Eye Tracking Glasses were developed in partnership with Volfoni.[34] 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.[35]German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) used the Eye Tracking Glasses to create Talking Places – the prototype of an interactive city guide.[36][37]
In 2012, in partnership with
Emotiv SMI developed a software package that combined the EEG data from the
EmotivEEG Neuroheadset with the eye tracking data.[38] 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.[39] 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.[40][41]
Acquisition
It was reported that
Apple acquired SMI in June 2017.[42][43]
Awards
In 1992, SMI won the Berlin and Brandenburg Innovation Prize.[44]
In 2009, SMI's iView X RED system received the iF Product Design Award.[45]