Eye-tracking glasses to measure cognitive load in bionic prosthetic hand users

The aim of this clinical project was to measure cognitive load during learning a bionic hand.

Recent advances in bionic hands have produced more durable and highly dexterous prostheses. However, it is challenging to learn a bionic hand that has multiple grip patterns and if it takes too much cognitive load to learn a bionic hand then the user would eventually stop learning the bionic hand.Measurement of cognitive load while learning to use a bionic hand will help the therapist to adjust the training pace and help the user to achieve success.

We used eye-tracking glasses to measure cognitive load during prosthetic training. Gaze measures indicate the attention paid in certain tasks and whether the performance is natural or not. Gaze movement can thus indicate the level of competence and experience of prosthesis users. The results will also help us to gain a better understanding of human-prosthesis interaction in relation to advanced technology and everyday task performance.