An Analysis of How Driver Experience Affects Eye-Gaze Behavior for Robotic Wheelchair Operation

Abstract

Drivers obtain information on surrounding environment using their eyesights. Experienced eye-gaze behavior is needed when driving at places where multiple risks exist to prepare for and avoid them. In this work, we analyze the change in eye-gaze behavior in such situations while a driver gains experience on the operation of a robotic wheelchair. Accurate distance information in the traffic environment is important to analyze the eye-gaze behavior. However, almost all previous works analyze eye-gaze behavior in a 2D environment, so they could not obtain accurate distance information. For this reason, we analyze eye-gaze behavior in 3D space. Concretely, we developed a novel eye-gaze behavior analysis platform based on a robotic wheelchair and estimated the driver's attention in 3D space. We try to analyze the eye-gaze behavior considering a useful field-of-view in 3D space based on the distance information instead of only the fixation point to investigate the objects that a driver implicitly pays attention to and from where s/he focuses on them. Results show that novice drivers pay attention to a single risk at a time. In contrast, they pay more attention to multiple risks simultaneously as they gain experience. Additionally, we discuss what features are effective to model the eye-gaze behavior based on the results.