Waveguided Holographic Infrared Soldier-Mounted Eye Tracker

To address the U.S. Army need for a head or helmet mounted eye monitor, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a novel Waveguided Holographic Infrared Soldier-mounted eye Tracker (WHIST). The proposed device will illuminate the eye with a modulated infrared beam delivered from an LED by a flexible thin optical fiber bundle via total internal reflection inside a thin plastic waveguide visor, and a reflection hologram. The beam reflected from the eye and coupled back into the fiber bundle is captured and processed by a high-speed CMOS imaging array chip. With the high speed modulation of the LED, the device will collect complete information about gaze, pupil, eyelid, and saccadic movements, which will be processed in real time, and determine points of fixation of eyes in milliseconds. In Phase I POC will demonstrate the feasibility of WHIST by connecting the sensor array to a remote panel, where the data will be integrated with data from a standard physiological database. Algorithms and software will be designed so that data streams will be collected synchronously and processed to generate all the required parameters. In Phase II POC will produce a complete prototype system, which will undergo initial Airworthiness Certification testing.