Exploring Eye-Tracking-Based Detection of Visual Search for Elderly People

Visual search plays an important role in our daily lives and can be very frustrating whenever we cannot remember where we left objects, such as keys or wallets. This is especially true for elderly people, since they forget things more often and face this challenge very frequently. While there are several studies which analyze eye movements during visual search, none of them actually tries to detect whether a user is searching for something or not. However, this information is necessary to recognize when the user needs assistance. Therefore, we propose an eye-tracking-based multimodal approach in order to detect visual search and to support the user in that situation. Furthermore, we explore multiple strategies to inform the user of the desired object's location using a head mounted display. With the help of a prototypical implementation and evaluation of the acquired sensor data, we show that our method is feasible and capable of dealing with this challenge.