By Alfred Hermida BBC News Online technology staff

Computers of the future could be controlled by eye movements, rather than a mouse or keyboard.

Scientists at Imperial College, London, are working on eye-tracking technology that analyses the way we look at things.

The team is trying to gain an insight into visual knowledge - the way we see objects and translate that information into actions.

"Eye-trackers will one day be so reliable and so simple that they will become yet another input device on your computer, like a much more sophisticated mouse," said Professor Guang-Zhong Yang of the Department of Computing at Imperial College.

Needle in a haystack

The scientists at Imperial College have been using an infra-red eye-tracking headset to understand how the eye moves when given a task.

Yang: Act of looking is very sophisticated

For the research, people have been shown an image and given a limited amount of time to find a specific target, such as a waving hand in a crowd.

Searching for something like a hand in a crowd requires as much mental effort as, for example, solving a crossword puzzle. The scientists are trying to understand how this visual knowledge works.

"You can see things but you may not be able to recognise things," Professor Yang told the BBC programme Go Digital.

"It is the only when the eye registers with the cognitive part of the brain that things start to happen.

"We are trying to unravel how biological visual systems work and reverse-engineer better computer vision systems," he said.

Eye-control

The team is looking at applying its research for use in areas such as keyhole surgery or robotic surgery.

"If you want to operate on a moving object using keyhole surgery, such as the beating heart to do a coronary bypass, you want to have a stable view," he explained.

"So we could have the camera move in correspondence with this rhythm so what you see is a stationary picture."

Professor Yang believes eye-tracking technology could also help the way we interact with machines, such as computers.

Other potential applications include installing an eye-tracker in a car dashboard to warn a driver who is falling asleep, or enable a fighter pilot to aim missiles by simply looking at a target.

Professor Yang was presenting his work at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London, which showcases researchers at the cutting edge of science in the UK.