Large eye–head gaze shifts measured with a wearable eye tracker and an industrial camera

Abstract

AbstractWe built a novel setup to record large gaze shifts (up to 140$$^\circ $$ ∘ ). The setup consists of a wearable eye tracker and a high-speed camera with fiducial marker technology to track the head. We tested our setup by replicating findings from the classic eye–head gaze shift literature. We conclude that our new inexpensive setup is good enough to investigate the dynamics of large eye–head gaze shifts. This novel setup could be used for future research on large eye–head gaze shifts, but also for research on gaze during e.g., human interaction. We further discuss reference frames and terminology in head-free eye tracking. Despite a transition from head-fixed eye tracking to head-free gaze tracking, researchers still use head-fixed eye movement terminology when discussing world-fixed gaze phenomena. We propose to use more specific terminology for world-fixed phenomena, including gaze fixation, gaze pursuit, and gaze saccade.