Eyefluence

Eyefluence
Information
Industry	Eye tracking, eye interaction for head-mounted displays
Founded	2013
Founder	Jim Marggraff, David Stiehr
Headquarters	Milpitas, California, United States (earlier Reno, Nevada)
Notable Personnel	Jim Marggraff (founder, chairman and CEO), David Stiehr (co-founder), Peter Milford (CTO)
Products	iUi eye-interaction model, eye-tracking algorithms for licensing
Parent	Google (from October 2016)
Website	http://eyefluence.com (defunct)

Eyefluence (Eyefluence, Inc.) was an American startup that developed eye tracking technology, algorithms and an eye-driven user interface for virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality head-mounted displays. It was founded in early 2013 by Jim Marggraff, the creator of the LeapPad learning system and founder of Livescribe, together with co-founder David Stiehr. The company planned to license a suite of eye-tracking algorithms and its eye-driven interaction model, called iUi, to device makers.

Eyefluence's main idea was to let a user select and act with natural eye movements instead of the dwell (holding the gaze) or wink gestures used by earlier gaze-control systems. It raised 21.6 million US dollars from investors including Intel Capital and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. On 24 October 2016 the company announced that its team was joining Google; the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Checked funding, founding, team, office locations, demonstrations, acquisition and technology claims against TechCrunch, VentureBeat, UploadVR, PCWorld, Road to VR, Fortune, Engadget, the Motorola Solutions release, archived Eyefluence pages and Google Patents assignment records. About review dates.

History

Origins and founding

Marggraff told UploadVR that the technology's roots went back to 1998, when a doctor named William Torch built an eye-tracking system for a "locked in" patient who could move only his eyes; the system let the patient move a cursor and spell out words. Eyefluence's own 2013 website said its gaze-tracking technology had been acquired from an R&D company that developed it over 10 years with nearly 15 million US dollars in research grants from the US Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the National Institutes of Health and other bodies. Patent assignment records show the transfer. Two assignments recorded on 7 August 2013 moved William C. Torch's US patent 7,515,054 (eye-movement biosensors, communicators and controllers) from Torch to Eye-Com Corporation and from Eye-Com Corporation to Eyefluence, Inc. Other Eye-Com patents, such as US 8,890,946 on spatially controlled scene illumination, were assigned to Eyefluence in an assignment recorded the same day.

Marggraff and Stiehr founded Eyefluence in 2013 after buying that intellectual property. Stiehr was an entrepreneur whose earlier companies included Heart Technology and Heartstream. Peter Milford, a physicist with a PhD from the University of Queensland, was chief technology officer and vice president of engineering. In 2013 the company listed its address in Reno, Nevada. By January 2015 its contact page listed offices in Milpitas, California, and Reno. Fortune described it as based in Milpitas at the time of the Google deal.

Funding

Eyefluence's Series A round was led by Intel Capital. Motorola Solutions' press release and VentureBeat dated that round to 2013. Intel Capital publicly named Eyefluence, then described as a Reno-based eye-tracking specialist for AR and VR head-mounted displays, among 16 new investments made public to coincide with its Global Summit in November 2014; Intel did not disclose the amount for each company. TechCrunch, which described the round as taking place a year before November 2015, put the Series A at 7.6 million US dollars.

The company came out of stealth on 11 November 2015 with a 14 million US dollar Series B round led by Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. Jazz Venture Partners, NHN Investment and Dolby Family Ventures also took part, along with follow-on money from Series A investors. That brought total funding to 21.6 million US dollars. Motorola Solutions said it planned to use eye interaction in its public-safety products. Its chief technology officer, Paul Steinberg, described police officers pulling up information about a crime scene with eye movements alone while keeping their hands free. The press release said Eyefluence's technology rested on more than 30 granted or pending patents.

Demonstrations

Eyefluence showed prototypes to the press through 2016. In February 2016, PCWorld tried the system on a modified Oculus Rift and on Osterhout Design Group (ODG) R6 augmented reality glasses. On the glasses, Marggraff showed a "World Store" demo that photographed an item the user looked at and ordered it from Amazon. In July 2016, TechCrunch described prototypes built on AR glasses with cameras that watched the wearer's eyes, with demo uses ranging from online shopping to text messages that the company called "eye-messages". Marggraff told TechCrunch the company was "working with the major manufacturers of head-mounted display devices".

UploadVR tested the system in August 2016 on a modified HTC Vive and a pair of ODG AR glasses, both fitted with infrared LEDs, and used only eye movements to move through menus, keyboards and galleries. At that point the company had 31 employees. It said it would not sell an aftermarket add-on and would instead build its technology into partners' hardware. Marggraff also presented the system at Augmented World Expo 2016, and he discussed it with Kent Bye of the Voices of VR podcast at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2016.

Acquisition by Google

Eyefluence announced in a blog post dated 24 October 2016 that "the Eyefluence team is joining Google". The post said the company had spent three and a half years building its team, technology and partnerships. TechCrunch reported the deal that day. Neither company disclosed its terms, and Google did not say how it would use the technology. The purchase came shortly before Google released its Daydream View headset for the Google Daydream platform. UploadVR reported that 18 utility patents covering eye tracking, interaction and biometric security were part of the purchase. Patent records show Eyefluence's patents being assigned to Google Inc. in early 2017; for US 9,600,069 and US 9,823,744 the assignment was recorded on 2 February 2017, effective 27 January 2017.

Technology

Eyefluence called its approach "eye-interaction" rather than plain eye tracking. Its 2013 website described wearable gaze tracking that worked out where a user was looking in 3D space, eye control of a head-mounted display (including "eye gestures" made of rapid eye movements in a set pattern), and continuous capture of "oculometric" data from cameras placed close to the eye. From its public launch in November 2015, the company promoted the iUi interaction model. It said the system read natural eye movement and intent, worked in varying lighting, needed little battery or processing power, and could keep confirming the user's identity through iris recognition.

Marggraff contrasted the design with older gaze-control methods. He told VentureBeat that existing systems made a user either look at something and wait (dwell) or blink, which he said was useful for people with disabilities but impractical for others, and that the company had studied the biomechanics of the eye to find a different method. Road to VR's Kent Bye described it as a selection system triggered by natural eye movements and found it more comfortable than dwell or wink selection. He also called it an early version of a visual language that was still being defined, and expected eye input to work mainly alongside controller buttons and voice rather than replace them.

Eyefluence also promoted foveated rendering as a use of its tracking. In the February 2016 Oculus Rift demo, Marggraff said rendering only the area the user was looking at in full quality had cut the rendering load of a Unity scene by 60 percent. PCWorld's reviewer said he did not notice any difference, while noting that he had removed his glasses to fit the modified headset. Stiehr gave UploadVR a similar figure, saying foveated rendering could "reduce computing loads by as much as 60 percent". The company's VR page also listed adjustment for the distance between the pupils and for lens distortion among its intended uses. For augmented reality, it targeted "deskless" workers in fields such as health care, manufacturing and construction, and proposed using iris-based Continuous Biometric Identification (CBID) in place of passwords.

Selected patents

Patent	Title	Filed	Granted	Notes
US 7,515,054	Biosensors, communicators, and controllers monitoring eye movement and methods for using them	1 April 2005	7 April 2009	Inventor William C. Torch; assigned to Eye-Com Corporation and then to Eyefluence (assignments recorded 7 August 2013); later assigned to Google
US 8,890,946	Systems and methods for spatially controlled scene illumination	1 March 2010	18 November 2014	Assigned from Eye-Com Corporation to Eyefluence (recorded 7 August 2013); to Google Inc. (recorded 2 February 2017)
US 9,600,069	Systems and methods for discerning eye signals and continuous biometric identification	9 May 2015	21 March 2017	Inventors Nelson George Publicover and Lewis James Marggraff; assigned to Google Inc. (recorded 2 February 2017)
US 9,823,744	Systems and methods for biomechanically-based eye signals for interacting with real and virtual objects	2 November 2015	21 November 2017	Inventors include Publicover, Marggraff, Eliot Francis Drake and Spencer James Connaughton; assigned to Google Inc. (recorded 2 February 2017)

See also

• Eye tracking
• Foveated rendering
• Gaze-contingent display
• Tobii
• FOVE