Task Dependency of Eye Fixations & Development of a Portable Eye Tracker
Jeffrey M. Cunningham
Abstract
This senior research project is easily divisible into two parts. The first part was modeled after work Alfred Yarbus completed over thirty years ago. Yarbus contributed much to our knowledge of eye movements, and is widely quoted. One of Yarbus' results was a dependency between eye movements and the task at hand. In this study his work was replicated using a modern video eye tracker, and task was shown to have a statistically significant effect on eye fixations.
The second goal was the development of a comfortable, lightweight video eyetracker. The goal was to have an eyetracker that performs as well as the eyetracker currently in use (ASL's 501 model), have two hours battery time, and that was stable enough to be used on someone walking. New optics mounted on a baseball cap were used with the existing control box, and this system successfully tracked an eye. Battery power was sufficient for more than two hours of running time, but more work needs to be done.