How Does Eye-Gaze Relate to Gesture Movement in an Automotive Pointing Task?

With the recent advances in the gesture and eye-gaze tracking technologies, such trackers are increasingly finding applications in the automotive domain. They not only offer the means to measure the driver's workload (manual, visual and cognitive), their outputs can also be used as input modalities to improve the usability of in-vehicle interactive displays, such as touch-screens. This paper presents a preliminary study on analyzing the relationship between the motor and visual attention associated with the secondary task of interacting with an in-car display whilst driving. In particular, the response time and misalignment between the motor and visual attention during the pointing-selection tasks are considered. They are shown to be highly affected by the driving conditions. This study serves the purpose of devising effective approaches to combining data from gesture and eye-gaze trackers to simplify interacting with displays in vehicles.