Eye-tracking for human-centered mixed reality: promises and challenges

摘要

Eye-tracking hardware and software are being rapidly integrated into mixed reality (MR) technology. Cognitive scienceand human-computer interaction (HCI) research demonstrate several ways eye-tracking can be used to gauge usercharacteristics, intent, and status as well as provide active and passive input control to MR interfaces. In this paper, weargue that eye-tracking can be used to ground MR technology in the cognitive capacities and intentions of users and thatsuch human-centered MR is important for MR designers and engineers to consider. We detail relevant and timely researchin eye-tracking and MR and offer suggestions and recommendations to accelerate the development of eye-tracking-enabledhuman-centered MR, with a focus on recent research findings. We identify several promises that eye-tracking holds forimproving MR experiences. In the near term, these include user authentication, gross interface interactions, monitoringvisual attention across real and virtual scene elements, and adaptive graphical rendering enabled by relatively coarse eyetrackingmetrics. In the far term, hardware and software advances will enable gaze-depth aware foveated MR displays andattentive MR user interfaces that track user intent and status using fine and dynamic aspects of gaze. Challenges, such ascurrent technological limitations, difficulties in translating lab-based eye-tracking metrics to MR, and heterogeneous MRuse cases are considered alongside cutting-edge research working to address them. With a focused research effort groundedin an understanding of the promises and challenges for eye-tracking, human-centered MR can be realized to improve theefficacy and user experience of MR.