Sensors are all the rage these days. Slap one in a pair of headphones, and boom, you get a heart rate monitor. Put one in your bracelet, and there you go, instant pedometer. Now Eye Tribe is a company I’ve never heard of, but they were at CES showing off a tiny prototype $99 infrared sensor that plugs into the microUSB port on your Android device. It’s a super-advanced eye tracker that makes what Samsung slapped into the Galaxy S4 look like a pile of garbage. In fact, It’s so advanced that one of Eye Tribe’s employees was able to play the hit game Fruit Ninja using nothing but his eyes.

http://youtu.be/SOX8AL5p0bM?t=46s

Now let’s step back and ask a few important questions. Will anyone go out and spend $99 on this little dongle? Absolutely not, and I seriously hope that’s not how Eye Tribe intends to make money. What’s more likely going to happen is that Eye Tribe’s technology will be integrated into future products. And who knows, maybe they’ll even be acquired by the end of this year so that Samsung/Apple/Microsoft will have something that can differentiate them from the competition.

Besides gaming, what else can this dongle be used for? You could use it to control your phone’s user interface, but why would you want to do that when you already have a set of ten fingers? Advertisers will love being able to see where you look on a screen and where you don’t, but there’s all sorts of privacy implications there.

Consider this a “wait and see” product then.