TurnAware: Motion-Aware Augmented Reality Information Delivery While Walking

Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2024
Author List: Sunniva Liu, David Lindlbauer

TurnAware is a motion-based method for making AR notifications ambient, and we delivered a distraction-free AR walking experience. Sudden AR notifications can disrupt users (just like a phone buzz), especially while walking, leading to distractions, missed obstacles, or even falls, as walking requires attention to surroundings and movement coordination. To address this, we developed a motion-aware technique that uses head rotations to unobtrusively introduce AR content into the user's field of view.
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Description:
Augmented Reality (AR) systems can provide users with timely access to everyday information. Designing how AR information display is presented to the user, however, is challenging. If a visual message is presented suddenly in users' field of view, it will be detected, but might be disruptive to users. Conversely, if they are made visible by slowly fading their opacity, they might require longer effort for users to notice and react, as they need to wait for the content to become fully visible. This is particularly true for head-anchored virtual content, and when users are engaged in other tasks or walking in a physical environment. To address this challenge, we introduce a motion-aware technique that delivers AR visual information unobtrusively during walking when users rotate their head. Our approach tracks users' walking behavior, identifies moments when they turn, and moves the visual information into users field of view from the side at a speed proportional to their rotational velocity. We compare our method to a Fade-in and Pop-up baseline in a user study.
Our study results show that our method enables users to react to virtual content in a timely manner, while minimizing disruption on their walking patterns. This indicates that our technique of complements current AR Information Delivery techniques by striking a balance between noticeability and disruptiveness.
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#Augmented Reality, Motion-Tracking, Interaction Techniques, User Research

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(Using: Unity, C#, Node.js, Web Server, Motion Tracking, Quest Pro)
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