SocialEyes: Scaling mobile eye-tracking to multi-person social settings

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable mobile eye-tracking system for multi-person social settings, enabling synchronized data collection and analysis during real-world group activities, thus enhancing ecological validity in social behavior research.

Contribution

The authors developed a novel system for multi-person mobile eye-tracking with real-time monitoring, synchronization, and shared gaze analysis, addressing previous limitations in social environment studies.

Findings

Achieved precise synchronization between devices during live events.

Demonstrated accurate gaze projection in dynamic, real-world scenes.

Enabled new metrics for analyzing collaborative social behavior.

Abstract

Eye movements provide a window into human behaviour, attention, and interaction dynamics. Challenges in real-world, multi-person environments have, however, restrained eye-tracking research predominantly to single-person, in-lab settings. We developed a system to stream, record, and analyse synchronised data from multiple mobile eye-tracking devices during collective viewing experiences (e.g., concerts, films, lectures). We implemented lightweight operator interfaces for real-time-monitoring, remote-troubleshooting, and gaze-projection from individual egocentric perspectives to a common coordinate space for shared gaze analysis. We tested the system in a live concert and a film screening with 30 simultaneous viewers during each of two public events (N=60). We observe precise time-synchronisation between devices measured through recorded clock-offsets, and accurate gaze-projection in challenging dynamic scenes. Our novel analysis metrics and visualizations illustrate the potential of collective eye-tracking data for understanding collaborative behaviour and social interaction. This advancement promotes ecological validity in eye-tracking research and paves the way for innovative interactive tools.