Eye-tracking for avatar eye-gaze and interactional analysis in immersive collaborative virtual environments
William Steptoe, Robin Wolff, Alessio Murgia, Estefania Guimaraes, John P. Rae, PAUL M. SHARKEY, David Roberts, Anthony J. Steed · 2008
Participants' eye-gaze is generally not captured or represented in immersive collaborative virtual environment (ICVE) systems. We present EyeCVE, which uses mobile eye-trackers to drive the gaze of each participant's virtual avatar, thus supporting remote mutual eye-contact and awareness of others' gaze in a perceptually unfragmented shared virtual workspace. We detail trials in which participants took part in three-way conferences between remote CAVE™ systems linked via EyeCVE. Eye-tracking data was recorded and used to evaluate interaction, confirming the system's support for the use of gaze as a communicational and management resource in multiparty conversational scenarios. We point toward subsequent investigation of eye-tracking in ICVEs for enhanced remote social-interaction and analysis.