Eye tracking

Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research on the visual system, in psychology, in psycholinguistics, marketing, as an input device for human-computer interaction, and in product design.
In addition, eye trackers are increasingly being used for assistive and rehabilitative applications such as controlling wheelchairs, robotic arms, and prostheses. There are several methods for measuring eye movement, with the most popular variant using video images to extract eye position. Other methods use search coils or are based on the electrooculogram. History In the 1800s, studies of eye movement were made using direct observations. For example, Louis Émile Javal observed in 1879 that reading does not involve a smooth sweeping of the eyes along the text, as previously assumed, but

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A saccade (səˈkɑːd , French for jerk) is a quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation in the same direction. In contrast, in smooth pursuit movements, the eyes

Eye movement includes the voluntary or involuntary movement of the eyes. Eye movements are used by a number of organisms (e.g. primates, rodents, flies, birds, fish, cats, crabs, octopus) to fixate,

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways h

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Gaze Analysis methods for Learning Analytics

Kshitij Sharma

Eye-tracking had been shown to be predictive of expertise, task-based success, task-difficulty, and the strategies involved in problem solving, both in the individual and collaborative settings. In learning analytics, eye-tracking could be used as a powerful tool, not only to differentiate between the levels of expertise and task-outcome, but also to give constructive feedback to the users. In this dissertation, we show how eye-tracking could prove to be useful to understand the cognitive processes underlying dyadic interaction; in two contexts: pair program comprehension and learning with a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The first context is a typical collaborative work scenario, while the second is a special case of dyadic interaction namely the teacher-student pair. We also demonstrate, using one example experiment, how the findings about the relation between the learning outcome in MOOCs and the students' gaze patterns can be leveraged to design a feedback tool to improve the students' learning outcome and their attention levels while learning through a MOOC video. We also show that the gaze can also be used as a cue to resolve the teachers' verbal references in a MOOC video; and this way we can improve the learning experiences of the MOOC students. This thesis is comprised of five studies. The first study, contextualised within a collaborative setting, where the collaborating partners tried to understand the given program. In this study, we examine the relationship among the gaze patterns of the partners, their dialogues and the levels of understanding that the pair attained at the end of the task. The next four studies are contextualised within the MOOC environment. The first MOOC study explores the relationship between the students' performance and their attention level. The second MOOC study, which is a dual eye-tracking study, examines the relation between the individual and collaborative gaze patterns and their relation with the learning outcome. This study also explores the idea of activating students' knowledge, prior to receiving any learning material, and the effect of different ways to activate the students' knowledge on their gaze patterns and their learning outcomes. The third MOOC study, during which we designed a feedback tool based on the results of the first two MOOC studies, demonstrates that the variables we proposed to measure the students' attention, could be leveraged upon to provide feedback about their gaze patterns. We also show that using this feedback tool improves the students' learning outcome and their attention levels. The fourth and final MOOC study shows that augmenting a MOOC video with the teacher's gaze information helps improving the learning experiences of the students. When the teacher's gaze is displayed the perceived difficulty of the content decreases significantly as compared to the moments when there is no gaze augmentation. In a nutshell, through this dissertation, we show that the gaze can be used to understand, support and improve the dyadic interaction, in order to increase the chances of achieving a higher level of task-based success.

EPFL2015

Simulating interactions with virtual characters for the treatment of social phobia

Helena Stephanie Grillon Le Gallennec

Virtual Reality (VR) has nowadays become a very useful tool for therapists in the treatment of phobias. Indeed, it allows the simulation of scenarios which are difficult to reproduce in real life. It also allows for a situation to be repeated as much as one wants. Moreover, it allows for a complete control over the situation. The simulation can be stopped if the patient cannot handle it. It can also be tweaked for gradual exposure. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) has proven to be efficient in the context of phobias such as acrophobia or the fear of flying. Social phobia, however, are much harder to deal with. Indeed, as humans, we are experts in human representations and behaviors; it makes it much harder to obtain credible and immersive environments. In this thesis, we describe a set of tools and applications which we have developed to be used in VRET of social phobia and agoraphobia with crowds. We first describe how we create different scenarios for VRET of social phobia. We then expose the application we have developed which allows for elaborate interactions between a user and virtual characters. In particular, we have designed and implemented a software which allows for virtual characters to change behavior depending on the user's eye contact behavior. It allows them to seem interested when being looked at and distracted when not. We then describe the model we have implemented to simulate gaze attention behaviors for crowds of virtual characters. This consists of a method that automatically detects where and when each virtual character in a crowd should look. Secondly, it consists of a dedicated gaze Inverse Kinematics (IK) solver in order for the virtual characters to satisfy the constraints defined by the automatically detected points to be looked at. This allows for the characters to perform the looking motion in a natural and human like way. We then describe the architecture we have developed to combine the work we have done in the domain of social phobia and this model of attention behaviors for crowd characters. We thus use our model of looking behaviors to allow for crowd characters to look at each other. We also use eye-tracking and optical motion capture to determine where a user is looking in a CAVE environment. The virtual characters then respond by either looking at the user, looking at what the user is looking at, or looking at other characters in the crowd. We thus obtain an immersive and interactive environment for VRET in the domain of agoraphobia with crowds. The third part of this thesis describes various experiments we have conducted in order to validate our applications. Our first study consists of using VR in a head-mounted display (HMD) for the treatment of social phobia. In this study, we also use eye-tracking in order to analyze eye contact avoidance behaviors before and after therapy. We then discuss the use of eye-tracking as a tool to help assess and diagnose social phobia. Since eye contact avoidance behaviors are frequent in people suffering from such phobias, eye-tracking can certainly be a helpful tool. We describe an experiment in which we tested eye-tracking as a diagnosis and assessment tool on a phobic population and on a control group. We also describe an experiment to evaluate the potential of our proposed interaction loop in the context of social phobia. Finally, we describe the experiment we have conducted to evaluate our application in the context of agoraphobia with crowds.

EPFL2009

Augmented Reality to Facilitate a Conceptual Understanding of Statics in Vocational Education

Lorenzo Lucignano

At the core of the contribution of this dissertation there is an augmented reality (AR) environment, StaticAR, that supports the process of learning the fundamentals of statics in vocational classrooms, particularly in carpentry ones. Vocational apprentices are expected to develop an intuition of these topics rather than a formal comprehension. We have explored the potentials of the AR technology for this pedagogical challenge. Furthermore, we have investigated the role of physical objects in mixed-reality systems when they are implemented as tangible user interfaces (TUIs) or when they serve as a background for the augmentation in handheld AR. This thesis includes four studies. In the first study, we used eye-tracking methods to look for evidences of the benefits associated to TUIs in the learning context. We designed a 3D modelling task and compared users' performance when they completed it using a TUI or a GUI. The gaze measures that we analysed further confirmed the positive impact that TUIs can have on the learners' experience and enforced the empirical basis for their adoption in learning applications. The second study evaluated whether the physical interaction with models of carpentry structures could lead to a better understanding of statics principles. Apprentices engaged in a learning activity in which they could manipulate physical models that were mechanically augmented, allowing for exploring how structures react to external loads. The analysis of apprentices' performance and their gaze behaviors highlighted the absence of clear advantages in exploring statics through manipulation. This study also showed that the manipulation might prevent students from noticing aspects relevant for solving statics problems. From the second study we obtained guidelines to design StaticAR which implements the magic-lens metaphor: a tablet augments a small-scale structure with information about its structural behavior. The structure is only a background for the augmentation and its manipulation does not trigger any function, so in the third study we asked to what extent it was important to have it. We rephrased this question to whether users would look directly at the structure instead of seeing it only through a tablet. Our findings suggested that a shift of attention from the screen to the physical object (a structure in our case) might occur in order to sustain users' spatial orientation when they change positions. In addition, the properties of the gaze shift (e.g. duration) could depend on the features of the task (e.g. difficulty) and of the setup (e.g. stability of the augmentation). The focus of our last study was the digital representation of the forces that act in a loaded structure. From the second study we observed that the physical manipulation failed to help apprentices understanding the way the forces interact with each other. To overcome this issue, our solution was to combine an intuitive representation (springs) with a slightly more formal one (arrows) which would show both the nature of the forces and the interaction between them. In this study apprentices used the two representations to collaboratively solve statics problems. Even though apprentices had difficulties in interpreting the two representations, there were cases in which they gained a correct intuition of statics principles from them. In this thesis, besides describing the designed system and the studies, implications for future directions are discussed.

EPFL2018

Eye movement includes the voluntary or involuntary movement of the eyes. Eye movements are used by a number of organisms (e.g. primates, rodents, flies, birds, fish, cats, crabs, octopus) to fixate,