Increased driving safety and more rapid target identification by eye-tracking?

Authors:

  • Falkmer Torbjörn
  • Dahlman Joakim
  • Hasewinkel Håkan
  • Sjörs Anna

Publish date: 2006-01-01

Report number: FOI-R--2086--SE

Pages: 40

Written in: Swedish

Abstract

Previous studies on dismounted soldiers´ information seeking in suburban environments have not paid attention to agreement between real and virtual environments. As part of the TEBE-project, the present study fills this gap.Based on an explorative research approach, aiming to describe objects providing essential information for tacticaldecision support in suburban environments, these objects were compared with respect to differences andsimilarities between vehicle commander and driver in tactical movements training with combat vehicle 9040.Mounted on experienced commanders and drivers, data were recorded using eye trackers. The results showedlarge discrepancies between commander and driver with respect to their visual search patterns. This finding couldboth be based on natural conditions, as well as on lack of agreement between the two on their individual visualperceptual "schemata", the latter rendering less effective search strategies especially for the driver. A vast majorityof the fixations made were in the nearby geographical zones, which in turn has implication on future design of mapsto use for this type of missions. The results could also have consequence for driving safety with combat vehicle 9040 so far that it could be improve considerable,and used to facilitate higher driving speed during for example international service. Besides driving safety, could the results also beutilized to increase the capabilities of combat vehicle crew for detecting, identifying and combating targets.