Eye movements while viewing dynamic and static stimuli

Utilizing video camera eye tracking technology, an experimental system has been developed to track the eye of a person viewing a head-mounted display (HMD). The HMD and eye tracking system is well suited for investigations of human scanpaths and visual search strategies in virtual environments. Calibration tests demonstrate the robustness of measurements to head motion and stimulus duration. Preliminary results compare eye movements while viewing the motion of a simulated telerobot manipulator vs. eye movements while viewing a static snapshot of the same scene. Differences in the neurological coordination of eye movements while viewing dynamic vs. static stimuli has motivated the development of an automatic parsing algorithm for classifying the eye movements into phases of saccades, smooth pursuit and fixations.