Now, Sky Sports F1 teams up with Tobii – a company at the front of eye-tracking technology – and Sahara Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg to create a video to show what an F1 driver sees.
To find out, Sky Sports put a pair of Tobii eye-tracking glasses on Sahara Force India driver Hülkenberg to see what he focuses on, for how long and how he uses his near-superhuman reaction speeds to cut milliseconds off his lap time. One is able to see Hulkenberg’s viewpoint from behind the wheel by using state of the art glasses from Tobii. Five infrared cameras mounted on the frame of the glasses tracked the exact position of Hülkenberg’s eyes and relayed that information to a forward-facing camera which helped create the first, real-time view of an F1 driver’s actual sight. For instance, when exiting the pit lane, it only takes Hulkenberg 100 milliseconds (1/10th of a second) to check and process what’s in his side mirror. The same task would take half a second for the average driver. “It’s near enough superhuman. It’s approaching the shortest amount of time a human can look at something and take in the information we need,” the narrator of the video adds. Hulkenberg is then tested with the starting light which he reacts to “quicker than a tenth of a second”. Interestingly, the presenter tells us that “in athletics, anything below a tenth of a second is typically considered inhuman and therefore a false start”. Hulkenberg then talks us through as he drives, telling us what he’s looking out for. “Just focussing from apex to apex, looking to the apex. Feel what the car does with your body and just react with everything you have,” he says. The human eye can only focus on a relatively small area at any one time but the brain fills in the gap around that focal point with peripheral vision. Hulkenberg hones in on the apex when going into a corner, while his body feels what’s going on with the car. His brain then takes all of this information and immediately knows how fast the car can go before spinning out. In addition, Hulkenberg’s automatic reflexes kick in to help the driver multitask, which is coupled with an incredible reaction time and requires less time to examine his surroundings. Resource : Autoblog.
