Third-party development: eye-tracking in Narupa iMD

Figure taken from “Implementation of Eye-Tracking Recording Tool into Narupa iMD VR Environment for Application in Chemistry Education” by Ilia Kuzminov, Alexey Vokhmin, Kristina Sharaeva, Maxim Likhanov, Angelika Markovnikova, Andrey Vladimirovich Lyamin, and Mikhail Vyacheslavovich Kurushkin.

A group of researchers in Russia implemented eye tracking in Narupa iMD and published their results in the Journal of Chemical Education last December. They adapted the program we develop in our group to use the eye-tracking abilities of the HTC Vive Pro Eye. By doing so, their modified version of Narupa iMD can highlight the atom a user is watching and record it over time. The article's authors highlight how combining interactive Molecular Dynamics in Virtual Reality with eye-tracking could benefit student education. Beyond that, we are excited by the potential of eye-tracking in terms of user interface since knowing what a user is watching can help provide more precise interactions and help display more relevant information with less clutter.

The article is available in the Journal of Chemical Education, and the source code is on GitHub.

We are glad to see that this work, carried out independently from our laboratory, was made possible by the open-source nature of our own work. We hope to see more initiatives embrace our Narupa software framework.