Mobile eye tracking as a basis for real-time control of a gaze driven head-mounted video camera

Eye trackers based on video-oculographic (VOG) methods are a convenient means for oculomotor research. This work focused on the development of a VOG device that allows mobile eye tracking. It was especially designed to support a head-mounted gaze driven camera system presented in a companion paper [Wagner et al. 2006] (see Figure 1). The target applications of such a device can be seen in surgery, medical and behavioral sciences as well as in the documentation and teaching of manual tasks. One major aim was the design of a lightweight head mount at low costs. Since the actuators of the gaze camera require close-to-real-time control, the software was implemented on standard PC-hardware by using well-known VOG algorithms that were optimized for short latencies.