SafeXR: alerting walking persons to obstacles in mobile XR environments
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
SafeXR: alerting walking persons to obstacles in mobile XR environments HyeongYeop Kang1 · JungHyun Han2
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The increasing performance of smartphones has made it possible for people to enjoy various mobile XR applications as they walk. Due to the limit of human capability of multitasking, however, it may compromise mobile users’ safety. In this paper, we propose a safety assistance system for walking smartphone users, which utilizes only the smartphone’s built-in sensors. Our solution detects obstacles by analyzing the feature points extracted from the input camera images and then alerts the users to the danger ahead. In typical smartphone game, AR game, and mobile VR game environments, we made two experiments. The first experiment identifies the desirable and preferred distances to alert the obstacles, and the second one identifies what kinds of interfaces are appropriate for alerting walking persons while least distracting them from gaming. The results obtained from the experiments are integrated into a system, which we name SafeXR. Then, solid empirical evaluations are made on the effects of SafeXR on user’s safety, task performances, and user experiences. Keywords Mixed reality · User safety · Human–computer interaction
1 Introduction The performance of smartphones has evolved so rapidly that people can now enjoy various XR (eXtended Reality) applications with their smartphones, including AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) applications. Several studies reported that use of smartphones while walking inevitably compromises pedestrian’s cognitive resources and thus may lead to unsafe situations [1,27]. This is mainly due to the multitasking competition of limited cognitive resources. When a smartphone task is added to the walking task, one’s spatial awareness of the surrounding environment becomes distracted and can compromise their safety. As a solution to this trade-off issue, we propose a safety assistance system to notify mobile XR users of obstacles ahead in their path. We name the system SafeXR.
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JungHyun Han [email protected] HyeongYeop Kang [email protected]
1
Department of Software Convergence, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, South Korea
2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
SafeXR aims to provide alerts optimized for users in various mobile XR environments. To this end, we conduct a preliminary test and three experiments with mobile games because the problem of compromised safety is aggravated during the task of playing games [15]. The test and experiments take place in three mobile gaming environments: typical smartphone gaming, AR gaming, and VR gaming. Participants are instructed to fulfill the gaming task while walking and are given alerts when obstacles are detected. The preliminary test investigates what kinds of improvements are needed to achieve our goal. Based on the observations, three experiments are designed and conducted. The first experime
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