Eye Movements in Vehicle Control

Measuring gaze behaviour is useful to understand the cognitive processes involved in vehicle control and to test new assistance technology. Most of the research on eye movements in vehicle control was conducted in the context of road traffic and will therefore be focused on in this chapter. In the following, we will first introduce the driving task and outline how the eye-tracking methodology can be used to get insights into the cognitive processes that guide driving behaviour. Furthermore, we will highlight important classical findings and recent developments in the field of eye movements in driving. These include eye movements during basic vehicle control tasks like steering, driving manoeuvres and detecting hazards in the road environment. Additionally, factors influencing task performance (e.g., effects of visual distraction, workload, fatigue, driving experience, and aging) that can be observed by applying the eye-tracking method will be introduced. Conducting an eye-tracking study in the driving context often takes place in complex and highly dynamic environments. Therefore, in the last part of this chapter, we will give a practical guideline of what is important in order to study eye movements in the context of vehicle control including an overview of the most commonly used parameters to describe gaze behaviour in the context of driving. We will sum up this introductory chapter with an outline for future research on the topic of eye movements in vehicle control.