Wearable Tech Donated To WHS
Vector 4 Energy has gifted a state-of-the-art eye tracking headset to the Computing Science department at Wick High School. Having access to an eye tracking headset gives students an opportunity to develop advanced wearable technology that could enhance the ideas and application development within “Apps For Good”. Wick High School has seen huge success in the “Apps for Good” project having won awards and been national finalists for the past four years. This type of wearable technology is also open source enabling students to have full access to its design and software and allowing it to be customised and developed for different applications.
Today, the Director and founder of Vector 4 Energy, Doug Mackay, presented the school with the headset, courtesy of his company. This specific model will track the pupil position and overlays gaze estimation on an image of what the eye is viewing. The unit retails at about £1,500. Present by Skype from his office in Berlin is an engineer from Pupil Labs and a former pupil of Wick High School, Douglas Mackay Jnr, who joined Pupil Labs as an Electronic Engineer in April 2016. The German Company’s Headquarters is where the design and manufacturing of the product is carried out. Douglas Jnr is the son of Doug who left Wick High School in 2010 and studied electronics at Robert Gordon University. He worked with AMEC as a graduate engineer in Aberdeen for two years before venturing overseas to join Pupil Labs.
Chris Aitken, Computing Science Teacher, said “We are incredibly excited by this donation from Doug at Vector 4 Energy. I’m always amazed at the innovative ideas generated by pupils as well as their technical skills in designing solutions. Having access to this cutting edge technology will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of engineers and computer scientists in Wick High School. Our pupils are already talking about the implications of gaze detection on advertising with tailored adverts based on what you’ve been looking at. We will look to build on the many exciting projects already developed for the Pupil Labs headset and I look forward to seeing what our students come up with”.
Vector 4 Energy Ltd is an engineering and project management consultancy which consults with the Nuclear, Renewables and Oil & Gas industries. It specialises in the development of conceptual engineering solutions and its founder has worked in major projects within the Nuclear and Oil and Gas industries. It is currently developing two major Gas discoveries in the Central and Southern North Sea for a number of Oil Companies based out of Aberdeen, London and The Netherlands.