Blickshift GmbH

Recording and analysing eye movements is the business of Blickshift GmbH, a German company that writes software for recording and analysing eye movement data. Its flagship, Blickshift Analytics, came from many years of work in visual analytics. Its users are scientists who must interpret big eye movement datasets, often combined with video and readings from other measuring devices.

Analysis that does not depend on one eye tracker

Blickshift Analytics is hardware independent, so it can work with data from different eye trackers, including devices from Pupil Labs. Researchers can work with dynamic areas of interest and with more than twenty statistical metrics built into the software. Heat maps and scan paths have been reworked, and the company says existing Python scripts can be integrated into the workflow without rewriting them.

Finding similar eye movements

A search feature looks for similar eye movement behaviour across participants and recordings. The vendor says this helps analysts who want to group people by how they look at a scene, rather than reviewing every recording by hand. The feature is presented as useful for large studies where patterns would otherwise be lost in the data.

Recording and synchronising sensor data

Blickshift also offers software that records data streams and video from several sources at the same time. Once recorded, the data can be labelled, correlated with other sensor readings and exported to standard statistical tools for further analysis.

Analysis as a service

Alongside the software, the company offers a data analysis service in which its team processes a client's recordings to the client's own requirements. This suits groups that need results without building the analysis pipeline themselves.

Research background and projects

The company says its software reflects years of research in visual analytics. It also developed AbracaData, a virtual reality game created within the PRETINA research project. The company's news pages cover product updates, research topics and its podcast appearances, and the software is aimed at users in visualisation research, traffic studies and sports science.