How robust are wearable eye trackers to slow and fast head and body movements?

Ignace T C Hooge; Diederick C Niehorster; Roy S Hessels; Jeroen S Benjamins; Marcus Nyström

doi:10.3758/s13428-022-02010-3

How robust are wearable eye trackers to slow and fast head and body movements?

Behav Res Methods. 2023 Dec;55(8):4128-4142. doi: 10.3758/s13428-022-02010-3. Epub 2022 Nov 3.

Authors

Ignace T C Hooge¹, Diederick C Niehorster², Roy S Hessels³, Jeroen S Benjamins⁴, Marcus Nyström⁵

Affiliations

¹ Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. i.hooge@uu.nl.
² Lund University Humanities Lab and Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
³ Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
⁴ Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, and Social, Health and Organisational Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
⁵ Lund University Humanities Lab, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Abstract

How well can modern wearable eye trackers cope with head and body movement? To investigate this question, we asked four participants to stand still, walk, skip, and jump while fixating a static physical target in space. We did this for six different eye trackers. All the eye trackers were capable of recording gaze during the most dynamic episodes (skipping and jumping). The accuracy became worse as movement got wilder. During skipping and jumping, the biggest error was 5.8^∘. However, most errors were smaller than 3^∘. We discuss the implications of decreased accuracy in the context of different research scenarios.

Keywords: Body movement; Data quality; Head movement; Wearable eye tracking.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Eye Movement Measurements
Eye Movements*
Head Movements
Humans
Movement
Wearable Electronic Devices*