Eye-tracking during building inspections provides insight on how experts think

After a building failure due to natural disasters or poor structural design, safety inspectors must enter a structure to assess the damage before occupants can return. Researchers in the Penn State Department of Architectural Engineering have studied how building inspectors make their safety assessments, by analyzing their gaze patterns with eye-tracking software. Eventually, the eye-tracking data could be used to code autonomous robots, like drones, to conduct building assessments in place of humans.