Games Alfresco

Everyone is back from lunch and the afternoon session is on: User studies in augmented reality.

First on stage is Benjamin Avery to talk (with an animated Australian accent) about User Evaluation of See-Through Vision for Mobile Outdoor Augmented Reality. This

The study took users outdoors in various scenarios to test the performance of AR vision using see through displays. Then, they compared it with a second group that watched the video through a desktop computer

[link to paper, videos, images to come]

The result demonstrates complex trade-off between AR and desktop visualizations. AR system provided increased accuracy in locating specific points in the scene. AR visualization was quite simple, beating the desktop in tracking and in better visualization.

Stay tuned for the demo (which was hauled all the way from Australia to Cambridge)!

~~~

Next on stage is Cindy Robertson from Georgia Tech (Honorable mention in ISMAR 2007) and she discusses An Evaluation of Graphical Context in Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays.

How are users affected when there are many registration errors  or in other words when when tracking is not perfect? Can the user handle it better if a graphics context is provided?

They tested it with a set of tasks encompassing placing virtual Lego blocks with groups using Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays.

Following an exhaustive analysis of the resulted data they uncovered the following insights:

• Head movement and memorization increased performance
• Head movement affected perceived mental workload and frustration
• When you have graphics obstructing your view, and switching between it and real world is frustrating
• HUD-visible case was surprisingly faster than the other cases. But people hated it…

Final conclusion: Registered outperformed both the non-registered AR and graphics displayed on a HUD. Non-registered AR does not offer any significant improvement.

Future plans are to test home-like scenarios and impose more complex tasks.

~~~

On stage Mark Livingston is getting ready to talk about The Effect of Registration Error on Tracking Distant Augmented Objects.

A basic assumption is that registration errors limits performance of users in AR. “We wanted to measure the sources (such errors are noise, latency, position and orientation error) and see the affect on the user – and then be able to write requirements for future systems.”

For this study, they used the nVisorST.

The tasks were trying to measure the users ability to understand behaviors and situational awareness in the AR application: following a target (car) when buildings stand in between.

Conclusions are straight forward though somewhat surprising:

• Latency has significant effect on performance and response time – was the worse.
• Noise was disliked but did not have significant impact on performance
• Orientation error fifn’t have significant effect
• Weather had significant impact on results: darker weather delivered improved performances. Brightness was a major distraction.

===============

From the ISMAR Program

User Studies (from ISMAR ’08 program)

• User Evaluation of See-Through Vision for Mobile Outdoor Augmented Reality
  Benjamin Avery, Bruce H. Thomas, Wayne Piekarski
• An Evaluation of Graphical Context in Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays
  Cindy Robertson, Blair MacIntyre, Bruce Walker
• The Effect of Registration Error on Tracking Distant Augmented Objects
  Mark A. Livingston, Zhuming Ai

Filed under: AR Engines, AR Events | Tagged: AR user Studies, Benjamin Avery, Blair MacIntyre, Bruce H. Thomas, Bruce Walker, Cindy Robertson, ISMAR 08, Mark A. Livingston, Wayne Piekarski, Zhuming Ai |