Development of Automated Equipment for Saccadic Eye Movement Experiments

Abstract

This paper reports the initial design and partial construction of automated equipment for eyeball position measurement. Interface circuitry is being developed to enable a Heath Model H-11 microcomputer to control and take data from the eye position measuring equipment. Because many eye movements achieve high velocity and have a very short duration, it is necessary for the equipment to be able to take 2000 measurements per second. At that rate, it is imperative that data be transferred to a magnetic disk while further measurements are being taken. Initial testing and debugging of the available Fortran compiler are reported. A summary of selected prior experiments is presented. The work required to complete the project includes design modifications for and construction of the interface circuits, completing the design and building the control and measuring circuits, and writing the computer program to control the equipment.