Eye Tracking Data Collection Protocol for VR for Remotely Located Subjects using Blockchain and Smart Contracts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a blockchain-based protocol for collecting high-quality eye tracking data from remote VR subjects, enabling large-scale, naturalistic data collection outside laboratory settings.

Contribution

It presents a novel proof-of-concept protocol utilizing Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts for remote eye tracking data collection in VR environments.

Findings

Enables collection of high-quality eye tracking data remotely

Supports large and diverse participant groups

Facilitates data-driven human-computer interaction research

Abstract

Eye tracking data collection in the virtual reality context is typically carried out in laboratory settings, which usually limits the number of participants or consumes at least several months of research time. In addition, under laboratory settings, subjects may not behave naturally due to being recorded in an uncomfortable environment. In this work, we propose a proof-of-concept eye tracking data collection protocol and its implementation to collect eye tracking data from remotely located subjects, particularly for virtual reality using Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts. With the proposed protocol, data collectors can collect high quality eye tracking data from a large number of human subjects with heterogeneous socio-demographic characteristics. The quality and the amount of data can be helpful for various tasks in data-driven human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence.