Exploring the potential contribution of mobile eye-tracking technology in enhancing the museum visit experience

An intelligent mobile museum visitors' guide is a canonical case of a context-aware mobile system. Museum visitors move in the museum, looking for interesting exhibits, and wish to acquire information to deepen their knowledge and satisfy their interests. A smart context-aware mobile guide may provide the visitor with personalized relevant information from the vast amount of content available at the museum, adapted for his or her personal needs. Earlier studies relied on using sensors for location-awareness and interest detection. This work explores the potential of mobile eye-tracking and vision technology in enhancing the museum visit experience. Our hypothesis is that the use of the eye tracking technology in museums' mobile guides can enhance the visit experience by enabling more intuitive interaction. We report here on satisfactory preliminary results from examining the performance of a mobile eye tracker in a realistic setting - the technology has reached a reliable degree of maturity that can be used for developing a system based on it.