Eye Tracking Could Be the Next Big Smart Glasses Trend

When I first got a glimpse of how eye tracking worked inside a pair of smart glasses, the collision course for those two technologies felt inevitable. And if recent entrants into the category are anything to go by, that might be coming true sooner rather than later. Rokid, a major player in the smart glasses space out of China, recently announced its Rokid Color smart glasses, which are its first pair of display glasses with a color screen. On paper, they pull from a similar well as the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Meta’s first and only display glasses. The Rokid Color have a micro-LED display, weigh 55g, and the display can be used for viewing notifications, watching videos, and as a viewfinder for taking pictures. The new Rokid Color with eye tracking. © Rokid Where Rokid is really separating itself from the Meta Ray-Ban Display are the inputs. Not only do the Rokid Color have touch controls, but they also combine a touch-sensitive smart ring (similar to Even Realities’ Even G2) and (drumroll) eye tracking. While Rokid doesn’t offer much information on how eye tracking works outside of confirming that the Rokid Color supports it, I’d assume it’s similar to other glasses of its kind. On the pair that I tried, for example, a small eye-tracking module (about 1mm in size) follows your pupils, allowing you to navigate menus and make selections without using your hands. Rokid isn’t alone in its efforts to introduce a very low-footprint input system, either. Alibaba recently announced its new Qwen Glasses N1, which include a lot of head-turning features, like a 50-megapixel camera and some lofty health-tracking claims, but also—you guessed it—eye tracking. The Meta Ray-Ban Display and its muscle-reading wristband. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Eye tracking has been used in XR glasses for a while now, most notably in ultra-premium XR headsets like Apple’s Vision Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset, but in smart glasses, the story has been a bit different. Meta, for example, saddles its Meta Ray-Ban Display with a wristband that you have to put on to do just about everything. And then there are the noticeable pinch gestures you have to use once the wristband is on. For some people, it’s fine, but for most, the extra hardware can be less than ideal, especially when using them out and about. While Meta hasn’t given any indication of whether it’ll change its approach going forward, other players in the smart glasses game seem compelled to do so, which means you can likely expect even more eye tracking to come.