Friend or foe? Using eye-tracking technology to investigate the visual discrimination ability of giant pandas

The role that visual discriminative ability plays among giant pandas in social communication and individual discrimination has received less attention than olfactory and auditory modalities.Here,we used an eye-tracker technology to investigate pupil fixation patterns for 8 captive male giant pandas Ailuropoda melanoleuca.We paired images(N=26)of conspecifics against:1)sympatric predators(gray wolves and tigers),and non-threatening sympatric species(golden pheasant,golden snub-nosed monkey,takin,and red panda),2)conspecifics with atypical fur colora-tion(albino and brown),and 3)zookeepers/non-zookeepers wearing either work uniform or plain clothing.For each session,we tracked the pan-da's pupil movements and measured pupil first fixation point(FFP),fixation latency,total fixation count(TFC),and duration(TFD)of attention to each image.Overall,pandas exhibited similar attention(FFPs and TFCs)to images of predators and non-threatening sympatric species.Images of golden pheasant,snub-nosed monkey,and tiger received less attention(TFD)than images of conspecifics,whereas images of takin and red panda received more attention,suggesting a greater alertness to habitat or food competitors than to potential predators.Pandas'TFCs were greater for images of black-white conspecifics than for albino or brown phenotypes,implying that familiar color elicited more interest.Pandas reacted differently to images of men versus women.For images of women only,pandas gave more attention(TFC)to familiar combinations(uniformed zookeepers and plain-clothed non-zookeepers),consistent with the familiarity hypothesis.That pandas can use visual perception to discriminate intra-specifically and inter-specifically,including details of human appearance,has applications for panda conservation and captive husbandry.

Human Machine Collaborative Support Scheduling System of Intelligence Information from Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Based on Eye Tracker

Many human-machine collaborative support scheduling systems are used to aid human decision making by providing several optimal scheduling algorithms that do not take operator's attention into consideration.However, the current systems should take advantage of the operator's attention to obtain the optimal solution.In this paper, we innovatively propose a human-machine collaborative support scheduling system of intelligence information from multi-UAVs based on eye-tracker. Firstly, the target recognition algorithm is applied to the images from the multiple unmanned aerial vehicles(multi-UAVs) to recognize the targets in the images. Then,the support system utilizes the eye tracker to gain the eye-gaze points which are intended to obtain the focused targets in the images. Finally, the heuristic scheduling algorithms take both the attributes of targets and the operator's attention into consideration to obtain the sequence of the images. As the processing time of the images collected by the multi-UAVs is uncertain, however the upper bounds and lower bounds of the processing time are known before. So the processing time of the images is modeled by the interval processing time. The objective of the scheduling problem is to minimize mean weighted completion time. This paper proposes some new polynomial time heuristic scheduling algorithms which firstly schedule the images including the focused targets. We conduct the scheduling experiments under six different distributions. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is not sensitive to the different distributions of the processing time and has a negligible computational time. The absolute error of the best performing heuristic solution is only about 1%. Then, we incorporate the best performing heuristic algorithm into the human-machine collaborative support systems to verify the performance of the system.

Increased Visual Acuity Will Not Necessarily Equal an Increased Reading Ability in Patients with Subfoveal Neovascular Macular Degeneration

Reading ability in the elderly means independence, and quality of life. In age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the main deficit is the loss of reading ability. The neovascular form is the leading cause of vision loss in the developed world among people over 50 years of age. With ranibizumab (Lucentis) a drug treatment has become available, but, despite good outcome of visual acuity, patients often report that their reading ability has been affected. We aimed therefor to study reading performance with Tobii Eye Tracker in patients, treated with intravitrial Lucentis. Twenty patients, 15 female and 5 male (range 74 - 98 year), were recruited from St. Erik Eye Hospital. All had, before and after treatment, their reading speed, comprehension, fixations, saccadic eye movements measured while reading two texts with an equal readability rating. For all eye movement parameters, except the number of regressions per word, there was no statistically significant difference when comparing the results from before and after treatment. However, a statistically significant increase in the number of regressions per word after treatment as well as increased visual acuity and comprehension, were found. Reading is fundamental in our society and should be tested in order to fully understand a patient’s complaints;however, an increased VA will not necessarily equal an increased reading ability. The results also show that the Tobii system is suitable for evaluation of reading performance in a clinical setting, and can together with other tests, give valuable information about the patients complains and the outcome of a treatment.

Single-pilot operations in commercial flight:Effects on neural activity and visual behaviour under abnormalities and emergencies

With cutting-edge technologies and considering airline human-resource-saving,a single pilot in commercial jets could be technically feasible.Investigating changes in captains’natural behaviours are initially required to comprehend the specific safe human performance envelope for safeguarding single-pilot flight,particularly in high-risk situations.This paper investigates how captains’performance transforms for fixing emergencies when operating from Dual-Pilot Operations(DPO)to Single-Pilot Operations(SPO)through a physiological-based approach.Twenty pilots flew an emergency-included flight with/without first officers’assistance.The neural activities and scanning behaviours were recorded using a 32-channel Electroencephalogram(EEG)and glasses-based eye tracker,with the observation and post-experiment questionnaires to evaluate the flight operations and pilots’perception.Flying alone,there was a significantly increased cortical activity in h and b waves over the frontal,parietal,and temporal lobes during the more complicated emergencies,and pilots focused less on the primary flight display while spending significantly more time scanning the other interfaces.The physiological fluctuating patterns associated with risky operations in SPO were highlighted by cross-correlating multimodal data.The experimental-based noteworthy insights may wish to inform commercial SPO measures to lessen the persistent physiological fluctuation,assisting airlines in creating SPO-oriented intelligent flight systems to give captains adequate support for assuring safer air transportation.

Emotion detection on webpages using biosensors integrated to a window-based dynamic control system

Purpose-Detecting emotion on user experience of web applications and browsing is important in many ways.Web designers and developers find such approach quite useful in enhancing navigational features of webpages,and biomedical personnel regularly use computer simulations to monitor and control the behaviour of patients.On the other hand,law enforcement agents rely on human physiological functions to determine the likelihood of falsehood in interrogations.Quite often,online user experience is studied via tangible measures such as task completion time,surveys and comprehensive tests from which data attributes are generated.Prediction of users’emotion and behaviour in some of these cases depends mostly on task completion time and number of clicks per given time interval.However,such approaches are generally subjective and rely heavily on distributional assumptions making the results prone to recording errors.Design/methodology/approach-The authors propose a novel method-a window dynamic control system that addresses the foregoing issues.Primary data were obtained from laboratory experiments during which forty-four volunteers had their synchronised physiological readings,skin conductance response(SCR),skin temperature(ST),eye movement behaviour and users’activity attributes taken using biosensors.The windowbased dynamic control system(PHYCOB I)is integrated to the biosensor which collects secondary data attributes from these synchronised physiological readings and uses them for two purposes.For both detection of optimal emotional responses and users’stress levels.The method’s novelty derives from its ability to integrate physiological readings and eye movement records to identify hidden correlates on a webpage.Findings-Results show that the control system detects basic emotions and outperforms other conventional models in terms of both accuracy and reliability,when subjected to model comparison that is,the average recoverable natural structures for the three models with respect to accuracy and reliability are more consistent within the window-based control system environment than with the conventional methods.Research limitations/implications-The paper is limited to using a window control system to detect emotions on webpages,while integrated to biosensors and eye-tracker.Originality/value-The originality of the proposed model is its resistance to overfitting and its ability to automatically assess human emotion(stress levels)while dealing with specific web contents.The latter is particularly important in that it can be used to predict which contents of webpages cause stress-induced emotions to users when involved in online activities.