Evaluation of head-free eye tracking as an input device for air traffic control

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility to integrate a free head motion eye-tracking system as input device in air traffic control (ATC) activity. Sixteen participants used an eye tracker to select targets displayed on a screen as quickly and accurately as possible. We assessed the impact of the presence of visual feedback about gaze position and the method of target selection on selection performance under different difficulty levels induced by variations in target size and target-to-target separation. We tend to consider that the combined use of gaze dwell-time selection and continuous eye–gaze feedback was the best condition as it suits naturally with gaze displacement over the ATC display and free the hands of the controller, despite a small cost in terms of selection speed. In addition, target size had a greater impact on accuracy and selection time than target distance. These findings provide guidelines on possible further implementation of eye tracking in ATC everyday activity.

Practitioner Summary: We investigated the possibility to integrate a free head motion eye-tracking system as input device in air traffic control (ATC). We found that the combined use of gaze dwell-time selection and continuous eye–gaze feedback allowed the best performance and that target size had a greater impact on performance than target distance.

Keywords:

• eye tracking
• air traffic control
• gaze selection
• Fitts' law

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Midi-Pyrenees Regional Council grant. The authors would like to thank Daniel Etienne and François Colin for their assistance with the experimental set-up as well as Mathieu Serrurier for his comments and guidance in the preparation of this manuscript.