Eye Tracking On The International Space Station
The attention-tracking device (ETD) is a headmounted device, designed for measurement of 3D eye and head movements underneath experimental and natural circumstances. The iTagPro smart tracker permits comprehensive measurement of eye motion (three levels of freedom) and optionally head movement (six degrees of freedom). It represents a software for the investigation of sensorimotor behaviour, significantly of the vestibular and oculomotor techniques in both health and illness. It was initially developed by the German Space Agency (DLR) to be used on the International Space Station (ISS) and was uploaded to the station as a part of the joint European / Russian area programme in early 2004. The gadget was designed by Prof. Dr. Andrew H. Clarke (Vestibular Lab, Charité Berlin) together with the companies Chronos Vision and Mtronix in Berlin and built-in for area utilisation by the Munich-based company Kayser-Threde. In the first set of experiments, carried out by Prof. Clarke’s team in cooperation with the Moscow Institute for Biomedical Problems, the eye Tracking Device was used for the measurement of Listing's plane - a coordinate framework, which is used to define the motion of the eyes in the head.
The scientific purpose was to determine how Listing’s airplane is altered under various gravity circumstances. Specifically the affect of lengthy-duration microgravity on board the ISS and of the subsequent return to Earth’s gravity was examined. The findings contribute to our understanding of neural plasticity in the vestibular and oculomotor techniques. These experiments have been commenced within the spring 2004 and continued until late 2008 with a collection of cosmonauts and astronauts, who every spent six months on board the ISS. Examination of the orientation of Listing's aircraft during the course of a prolonged area mission is of explicit interest, as on Earth the Listing’s plane appears to be dependent on enter from the vestibular system i.e. detected by way of the pinnacle position with relation to gravity. By exposing the astronaut to the weightlessness of area, this experiment can observe the subsequent adaptation of the astronaut’s vestibular system throughout the flight and after returning to Earth.
The key query on this experiment is to what extent the orientation of Listing’s plane is altered by the adaptation of the vestibular system to weightlessness, or below gravitational ranges lower than or greater than these of Earth. An additional question is whether or not the body compensates for the missing inputs from the vestibular system by substituting other mechanisms throughout lengthy-term spaceflight. The ETD was employed for this study throughout the period from 2004 to 2008. During each six-month increment the experimental procedure was performed at regular three-week intervals so that the adaptation to microgravity may very well be evaluated. In addition equal measurements were made over the initial weeks after the return to Earth of every cosmonaut or astronaut. Within the meantime the ETD tools remains on the ISS as a normal goal instrument. It's presently in use by a bunch of Russian scientists from the Institute for Biomedical Problems, who are examining eye and head motion coordination in microgravity.
Digital eye-monitoring cameras - designed round state-of-the-art CMOS picture sensors - are interfaced to a dedicated processor board in the host Pc by way of bi-directional, excessive velocity digital transmission links (four hundred Mbit/s). This PCI plug-in board carries the front-finish processing structure, consisting of digital signal processors (DSP) and programmable logic gadgets (FPGA) for binocular, on-line picture and signal acquisition. For the eye monitoring process, a substantial knowledge reduction is performed by the sensor and the front-finish processing. Thus, solely preselected data are transferred from the picture sensor through to the host Pc where the final algorithms and iTagPro smart tracker knowledge storage are implemented. This eliminates the bottleneck brought on by commonplace body-by-body image acquisition, and thus facilitates significantly larger picture sampling rates. This processing architecture is integrated right into a ruggedised, IBM suitable Pc, which permits visualisation of the eyes and the corresponding alerts. An vital design function is the digital storage of all picture sequences from the cameras as digital files on exchangeable hard disk. After completion of each ISS mission, the onerous disk containing the recordings is returned to Earth. This ensures comprehensive and reliable image processing analysis in the investigators’ lab and minimises the time required for the experiment on the ISS. In parallel to the area-certified model of the eye Tracker a commercially obtainable model has been manufactured by the corporate Chronos Vision in Berlin and is put in in lots of laboratories in Europe, North America and Asia, where it represents an important tool for the examination of quite a few neurophysiological phenomena. Using excessive body price CMOS sensors for 3-dimensional eye tracking. Clarke, A.H.; Steineke, C.; Emanuel, ItagPro H. "High image rate eye movement measurement" (PDF).
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