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Estimating Distances in Action Space in Augmented Reality

Published: 21 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) is important for training complex tasks, such as navigation, assembly, and medical procedures. The effectiveness of such training may depend on accurate spatial localization of AR objects in the environment. This article presents two experiments that test egocentric distance perception in augmented reality within and at the boundaries of action space (up to 35 m) in comparison with distance perception in a matched real-world (RW) environment. Using the Microsoft HoloLens, in Experiment 1, participants in two different RW settings judged egocentric distances (ranging from 10 to 35 m) to an AR avatar or a real person using a visual matching measure. Distances to augmented targets were underestimated compared to real targets in the two indoor, RW contexts. Experiment 2 aimed to generalize the results to an absolute distance measure using verbal reports in one of the indoor environments. Similar to Experiment 1, distances to augmented targets were underestimated compared to real targets. We discuss these findings with respect to the importance of methodologies that directly compare performance in real and mediated environments, as well as the inherent differences present in mediated environments that are “matched” to the real world.

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cover image ACM Transactions on Applied Perception
ACM Transactions on Applied Perception  Volume 18, Issue 2
April 2021
78 pages
ISSN:1544-3558
EISSN:1544-3965
DOI:10.1145/3465476
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 21 May 2021
Accepted: 01 February 2021
Revised: 01 December 2020
Received: 01 July 2020
Published in TAP Volume 18, Issue 2

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Author Tags

  1. Augmented reality
  2. avatars
  3. distance perception

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  • (2024)Evaluating Transitive Perceptual Effects Between Virtual Entities in Outdoor Augmented Reality2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR58804.2024.00082(619-629)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
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