Minimizing Eye Movements and Distractions in Head-Mounted Augmented Reality through Eye-Gaze Adaptiveness

In augmented reality assistance systems for manual assembly, the user is forced to move the eyes to areas that are away from the performed assembly task in various situations which can cause inevitable physical effort and mental distraction. To counteract these movements and distraction potentials, we have adapted, developed, and evaluated approaches to minimize such movements and thus reduce distractions. Eye-Gaze Attention Markers can be used to direct the user's attention back to the current point of interest. With Eye-Gaze Following, an eye-gaze-based extension of an available Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) object following functionality, currently relevant information can be attached to the user's eye gaze to reduce focus shifts. For these approaches, we present the design and their implementation, as well as a user study (N = 40) evaluating completion time, mental workload, eye movements, and focus shifts to determine the impact on eye movement and distraction minimization. Furthermore, we provide guidelines for the use and improvements of the approaches presented. With the proposed approaches, we were able to achieve improvements in terms of eye movements and distraction minimization and identify further potential for research.