We are again involved in the organization of ETRA 2020, the ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications, taking place in Stuttgart in June 2020.
As one of our activities at ETRA 2020, Peter is co-chairing the Demo&Video Track. The Call for Demos&Videos is now online and open for submissions.
As part of our involvement in the upcoming Future Resilient Systems II research programme, we are looking for a PhD candidate working on the development of a visualization, interaction and notification framework for communicating disruptions predicted from weak signals.
Employment will be at the Singapore-ETH Centre, workplace Singapore.
More details and application here.
We’re very happy to welcome Victor Schinazi as a new team member! He’ll be working with us for 4 months before joining the faculty of Psychology at Bond University in Australia.
David Rudi has successfully defended his doctoral thesis on 16 September (“Enhancing Spatial Awareness of Pilots in Commercial Aviation”). We cordially congratulate, and are happy that he’ll stay with us as a PostDoc starting from November!
We are glad to announce an invited talk by Sophie Stellmach on Eye Tracking and Mixed Reality as part of the VERA Geomatics Seminar.
Dr. Sophie Stellmach is a Senior Scientist at Microsoft where she explores entirely new ways to engage with and blend our virtual and physical realities in products such as Microsoft HoloLens. Being an avid eye tracking researcher for over a decade, she was heavily involved in the development of gaze-based interaction with HoloLens 2.
The talk will take place as part of the VERA Geomatics Seminar on Thursday, 10th October 2019, 5:00 p.m. at ETH Hönggerberg, HIL D 53.
Title: Multimodal Gaze-supported Input in Mixed Reality and its Promises for Spatial Research
On 11 September, Prof. Dr. Detlef Günther, the Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations of ETH Zurich, has visited the D-BAUG department and informed himself about the exciting research activities of the different institutes.
Our institute was represented by Peter Kiefer, who summarized the research of the GeoGazeLab. The slides provide an overview on our research interests and current projects.
Edit. The presentation includes the PEGGASUS project. This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 821461
A quick reminder for the “1st International Workshop on Eye-Tracking in Aviation (ETAVI)” that is going to take place March 2019 in Toulouse, France.
The submission deadlines are:
Feel free to also forward the Call for Papers to any interested colleagues.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Edit. Some of the organizers from ETH are part of the PEGGASUS project. This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 821461
An article titled “Gaze-based interactions in the cockpit of the future: a survey” will appear in one of the next issues of the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces. It is now available online:
Abstract Flying an aircraft is a mentally demanding task where pilots must process a vast amount of visual, auditory and vestibular information. They have to control the aircraft by pulling, pushing and turning different knobs and levers, while knowing that mistakes in doing so can have fatal outcomes. Therefore, attempts to improve and optimize these interactions should not increase pilots’ mental workload. By utilizing pilots’ visual attention, gaze-based interactions provide an unobtrusive solution to this. This research is the first to actively involve pilots in the exploration of gaze-based interactions in the cockpit. By distributing a survey among 20 active commercial aviation pilots working for an internationally operating airline, the paper investigates pilots’ perception and needs concerning gaze-based interactions. The results build the foundation for future research, because they not only reflect pilots’ attitudes towards this novel technology, but also provide an overview of situations in which pilots need gaze-based interactions.
Our research project PEGGASUS (Pilot Eye Gaze and Gesture tracking for Avionics Systems using Unobtrusive Solutions) has attracted quite a bit of coverage in the media.
See for yourself in this little press review:
Edit. This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 821461
We’re glad to announce the 1st International Workshop on Eye Tracking in Aviation (ETAVI), which will take place March 17, 2020 in Toulouse, France.
The workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners who have a common interest in using eye tracking in the aviation domain including, but not limited to the cockpit and air traffic control / management.
The keynote will be given by Leonardo Di Stasi an assistant professor at the University of Granada (Spain) with an extensive research background in the field of Aviation and Eye Tracking.
The Call for Papers is now available (Paper submission deadline: September 30, 2019; Abstract submission deadline: September 9, 2019).
On June 12th, our colleagues from Swiss International Air Lines Ltd. and we had the honor to present our project on “Enhanced flight training program for monitoring aircraft automation” at the Royal Aeronautical Society, and received a lot of positive feedback for our project.
This year, the Spring Conference of the Royal Aeronautical Society Flight Simulation Group was on “The Future Reality of Flight Simulation” and featured a number of very interesting talks (Programme).
We thank our hosts for having us and plan to visit next year’s event as well.
Our group has organized the “Eye Tracking for Spatial Research” event as a track at this year’s ETRA conference in Denver, Colorado. It featured four full paper presentations, one short paper presentation, as well as an invited talk (see program). A dominant topic at this year’s ET4S was augmented/mixed/virtual reality. As a particular highlight, our invited speaker Sophie Stellmach (Senior Scientist at Microsoft) highlighted the fascinating opportunities of HoloLens 2, an upcoming mixed reality device that will have eye tracking capabilities included.
The GeoGazeLab was further involved with Fabian’s talk on “POI-Track: Improving Map-Based Planning with Implicit POI Tracking” and Kuno presenting his work on “Space-Time Volume Visualization of Gaze and Stimulus” in the ETRA main program. A paper co-authored by Martin was presented by one of his co-authors (“Eye Tracking Support for Visual Analytics Systems: Foundations, Current Applications, and Research Challenges”).
The invited talk by Sophie Stellmach (Microsoft) …
… attracted quite some audience.
Testing HoloLens 2 after ET4S.
The program of ET4S 2019, a track at ETRA, is now available on the website: http://et4s.ethz.ch/program/.
We’re excited to announce Sophie Stellmach (Senior Scientist @ Microsoft, HoloLens team) as this year’s invited speaker at ET4S. The title of her talk is “Eye Tracking in Mixed Reality and its Promises for Spatial Research”.
ET4S 2019 is going to take place 26 June 2019, 15:30 – 18:00, at the ETRA conference in Denver, Colorado, USA. Attendance of ET4S is included in the ETRA registration.
We’ll present one full paper and two workshop position papers at CHI in Glasgow this year:
Workshop: Designing for Outdoor Play (4th May, Saturday – 08:00 – 14:00, Room: Alsh 1)
Kiefer, P.(2019) Gaze-guided narratives for location-based games. In CHI 2019 Workshop on “Designing for Outdoor Play”, Glasgow, U.K., DOI: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000337913
Workshop: Challenges Using Head-Mounted Displays in Shared and Social Spaces (5th May, Sunday – 08:00 – 14:00, Room: Alsh 2)
Göbel, F., Kwok, T.C.K., and Rudi, D.(2019) Look There! Be Social and Share. In CHI 2019 Workshop on “Challenges Using Head-Mounted Displays in Shared and Social Spaces”, Glasgow, U.K., DOI: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000331280
Paper Session: Audio Experiences(8th May, Wednesday – 14:00 – 15:20, Room: Alsh 1)
Kwok, T.C.K., Kiefer, P., Schinazi, V.R., Adams, B., and Raubal, M. (2019) Gaze-Guided Narratives: Adapting Audio Guide Content to Gaze in Virtual and Real Environments. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019), Maz 4-9, Glasgow, U.K. [PDF]
We are looking forward to seeing you in Glasgow!
These researches are part of the LAMETTA or IGAMaps projects.
Kuno Kurzhals has started in our group as a PostDoc.
Welcome to the team!
More than 30 participants attended the meeting of the Eye Tracking Interest Group Zurich (ETIZ) hosted by us on 26 March 2019. Our invited speaker Andreas Bulling (University of Stuttgart) provided insights into his current and past research on pervasive eye tracking. Tiffany Kwok (GeoGazeLab, LAMETTA project) presented her PhD research on gaze-guided narratives. In an interactive mini-workshop, moderated by Arzu Çöltekin (FHNW), attendees brainstormed about challenges of eye tracking in VR and AR displays. Discussions were continued during an apéro, and many took the opportunity to try out a gaze-adaptive map demo (Fabian Göbel, GeoGazeLab, IGAMaps project).
An article titled “FeaturEyeTrack: automatic matching of eye tracking data with map features on interactive maps” will appear in one of the next issues of the Geoinformatica journal. It is now available online:
FeaturEyeTrack: automatic matching of eye tracking data with map features on interactive maps
Abstract Map reading is a visual task that can strongly vary between individuals and maps of different characteristics. Aspects such as where, when, how long, and in which sequence information on a map is looked at can reveal valuable insights for both the map design process and to better understand cognitive processes of the map user. Contrary to static maps, for which many eye tracking studies are reported in the literature, established methods for tracking and analyzing visual attention on interactive maps are yet missing. In this paper, we present a framework called FeaturEyeTrack that allows to automatically log the cartographic features that have been inspected as well as the mouse input during the interaction with digital interactive maps. In particular, the novelty of FeaturEyeTrack lies in matching of gaze with the vector model of the current map visualization, therefore enabling a very detailed analysis without the requirement for manual annotation. Furthermore, we demonstrate the benefits of this approach in terms of manual work, level of detail and validity compared to state-of-the-art methods through a case study on an interactive cartographic web map.
We are going to host the next meeting of the Eye Tracking Interest Group Zurich (ETIZ). Everyone using, or planning to use eye tracking in their research is cordially welcome!
Date, time: 26th March 2019, 17:30
Place: ETH Zurich Hönggerberg, HIL D 53
17:30 – 17:35
Welcome
17:35 – 18:15
“Recent Advances Towards Pervasive Eye Tracking”
Prof. Dr. Andreas Bulling, Professor for Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Systems
University of Stuttgart, Germany
18:15 – 18:35
“Gaze-Guided Narratives”
Tiffany C.K. Kwok, Doctoral Student
Geoinformation Engineering, ETH Zurich
18:35 – 18:55
“Eye tracking in VR and AR displays: A mini-workshop”
Dr. Arzu Çöltekin, Assoc. Prof., Principal Investigator
Institute for Interactive Technologies IIT, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW
18:55 – 19:00
Closing
19:00
Apéro, with demo of a gaze-adaptive interactive map by Fabian Göbel, Geoinformation Engineering
PEGGASUS (Pilot Eye Gaze and Gesture tracking for Avionics Systems using Unobtrusive Solutions)
We’re glad to announce the start of a new aviation project at the GeoGazeLab.
Check out our vision for pilot interactions in the cockpit of the future at the project page.
Edit. This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 821461
Our paper “Gaze-Guided Narratives: Adapting Audio Guide Content to Gaze in Virtual and Real Environments” has been accepted by ACM CHI 2019 as a full paper:
Kwok, T.C.K., Kiefer, P., Schinazi, V.R., Adams, B., and Raubal, M. (2019) Gaze-Guided Narratives: Adapting Audio Guide Content to Gaze in Virtual and Real Environments. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019), ACM (accepted)
This paper proposes Gaze-Guided Narratives as an implicit gaze-based interaction concept for guiding tourists through the hidden stories of a city panorama. It reports on the implementation and evaluation of this concept which has been developed as part of the LAMETTA project. This research has been performed in collaboration between the GeoGazeLab, Victor R. Schinazi (Chair of Cognitive Science, ETH Zurich) and Benjamin Adams (Department of Geography, University of Canterbury).
Abstract. Exploring a city panorama from a vantage point is a popular tourist activity. Typical audio guides that support this activity are limited by their lack of responsiveness to user behavior and by the difficulty of matching audio descriptions to the panorama. These limitations can inhibit the acquisition of information and negatively affect user experience. This paper proposes Gaze-Guided Narratives as a novel interaction concept that helps tourists find specific features in the panorama (gaze guidance) while adapting the audio content to what has been previously looked at (content adaptation). Results from a controlled study in a virtual environment (n=60) revealed that a system featuring both gaze guidance and content adaptation obtained better user experience, lower cognitive load, and led to better performance in a mapping task compared to a classic audio guide. A second study with tourists situated at a vantage point (n=16) further demonstrated the feasibility of this approach in the real world.
We are happy to welcome Luis Lutnyk as a new PhD student in the GeoGazeLab! His research will be about eye tracking in aviation.
Edit. Luis is part of the PEGGASUS project. This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 821461
A quick reminder for the “Eye Tracking for Spatial Research” event that is going to be a track at the “2019 ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications” (ETRA).
Feel free to also forward the Call for Papers to any interested colleagues.
We look forward to seeing you again!
We’re glad to announce the 4th edition of the “Eye Tracking for Spatial Research” (ET4S) event which will take place June 25-28, 2019 in Denver, Colorado, USA.
After three successful ET4S workshops in Scarborough (2013), Vienna (2014) and Zurich (2018), the 4th edition of ET4S will be organized as a conference track at the “ACM 2019 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications in Denver” (ETRA)
ET4S aims to bring together researchers from different areas who have a common interest in using eye tracking for research questions related to spatial information and spatial decision making.
The Call for Papers is now available (Paper abstracts due: December 14, 2018).
Two news articles published about the “Awareness in Aviation” project (both in German).
One article, written by Dominik Haug for the Aeropers Rundschau, which can be found here: Eye-Tracking – das Auge im Blick.
Another article, written by Benjamin Weinmann for the Aargauer Zeitung, which can be found here.
We are happily announcing that two of our papers have been accepted at GIScience 2018 and the Workshop on Spatial big data and machine learning in GIScience:
Fabian Göbel, Peter Kiefer, Ioannis Giannopoulos and Martin Raubal. 2018. Gaze Sequences and Map Task Complexity. GIScience 2018, Melbourne, Australia.
Fabian Göbel, Henry Martin. 2018. Unsupervised Clustering of Eye Tracking Data. Spatial big data and machine learning in GIScience, Workshop at GIScience 2018, Melbourne, Australia.
Both works are part of the IGAMaps project.
We are happy to announce, that our paper received the best paper award at ETVIS!
David Rudi, Peter Kiefer, and Martin Raubal. 2018. Visualizing Pilot Eye Movements for Flight Instructors. In ETVIS’18: 3rdWorkshop on Eye Tracking and Visualization
The paper is part of the Awareness in Aviation project.
We have presented the LAMETTA project at the GeoSummit in Bern (6-7 June 2018), the largest congress for geoinformatics, surveying and planning in Switzerland.
Federal councilor Guy Parmelin was one of the first visitors of our exhibit and was very interested in the innovative system. Due to his subsequent opening speech, there was no time to try out the gaze-based tourist guide to Lake Lucerne himself, but the short visit seemed already impressive.
A large number of visitors from both, industry and academia, visited our exhibit and tried out the system. In addition, our exhibit was part of the GeoSchoolDay – an event in conjunction with GeoSummit which introduces students at high school age to applications and opportunities of geo information technologies. Approx. 500 pupils visited LAMETTA and learned about eye tracking and its application in interactive systems.
ETH News for Industry published a video on our “Awareness in Aviation” project.
We are happy to announce, that two of our papers have been accepted at ETRA and ETVIS.
Fabian Göbel, Peter Kiefer, Ioannis Giannopoulos, Andrew T. Duchowski, and Martin Raubal. 2018. Improving Map Reading with Gaze-Adaptive Legends. In ETRA ’18: 2018 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications
David Rudi, Peter Kiefer, and Martin Raubal. 2018. Visualizing Pilot Eye Movements for Flight Instructors. In ETVIS’18: 3rdWorkshop on Eye Tracking and Visualization
These papers are part of the IGAMaps and Awareness in Aviation projects.
Peter Kiefer has further been involved in ETRA as an Area Chair.
We congratulate Ioannis Giannopoulos to his new university professor position at TU Vienna, where he is heading the Research Group Geoinformation at the Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation (since January). Ioannis was a PhD student and PostDoc with the GeoGazeLab between 2012 and 2017.