AR DriveSim: An Immersive Driving Simulator for Augmented Reality Head-Up Display Research

A feasibility study of Augmented Reality Intervention for Safety Education for farm parents and children

Agriculture is one of the most dangerous U.S. occupations with high rates of injuries and fatalities, and especially more dangerous for children, having more young worker deaths than any other industry. Thus, safety education is essential in promoting safe and healthy working habits in agriculture. Augmented reality (AR) technology has great potential to enhance the effectiveness of safety education due to its high levels of system-user interactivity and media enjoyment. This study aims to: (1) develop Augmented Reality Intervention for Safety Education (ARISE), an AR 3D simulator that presents farm accident situations with immersive media technology, (2) examine the feasibility of ARISE, and (3) evaluate the potential of ARISE as an effective agricultural safety education program for farm parents and children. To test the feasibility of ARISE, we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten parent-child dyads at an extension office located in Maryland. Participants were farmers who owned and operated a family farm(s) with their child or children ages 5-13. The interviews included asking participants questions about their perceptions of farm risks, sources of risk education, and protection methods. In the next step, participants used ARISE with researcher guidance. After using the application, participants were asked questions about their experience using ARISE and suggestions for improvement. The interviews were then transcribed and analyzed following the conventional content analysis method. Three main themes emerged-demand (e.g., perceived risk and need for education; lack of farm safety education from school), acceptability (e.g., attitude toward AR technology; perceived realism; perceived ease of use; perceived usefulness), and implementation. These findings help us understand how an immersive experience can play an impactful role in enhancing agricultural safety. The feasibility of ARISE sheds light on the potential of AR technology for an innovative safety education program.

Automotive Holographic Head-Up Displays

Driver's access to information about navigation and vehicle data through in-car displays and personal devices distract the driver from safe vehicle management. The discrepancy between road safety and infotainment must be addressed to develop safely operated modern vehicles. Head-up displays (HUDs) aim to introduce a seamless uptake of visual information for the driver while securely operating a vehicle. HUDs projected on the windshield provide the driver with visual navigation and vehicle data within the comfort of the driver's personal eye box through a customizable extended display space. Windshield HUDs do not require the driver to shift the gaze away from the road to attain road information. This article presents a review of technological advances and future perspectives in holographic HUDs by analyzing the optoelectronics devices and the user experience of the driver. The review elucidates holographic displays and full augmented reality in 3D with depth perception when projecting the visual information on the road within the driver's gaze. Design factors, functionality, and the integration of personalized machine learning technologies into holographic HUDs are discussed. Application examples of the display technologies regarding road safety and security are presented. An outlook is provided to reflect on display trends and autonomous driving.

Determining the impact of augmented reality graphic spatial location and motion on driver behaviors

While researchers have explored benefits of adding augmented reality graphics to vehicle displays, the impact of graphic characteristics have not been well researched. In this paper, we consider the impact of augmented reality graphic spatial location and motion, as well as turn direction, traffic presence, and gender, on participant driving and glance behavior and preferences. Twenty-two participants navigated through a simulated environment while using four different graphics. We employed a novel glance allocation analysis to differentiate information likely gathered with each glace with more granularity. Fixed graphics generally resulted in less visual attention and more time scanning for hazards than animated graphics. Finally, the screen-fixed graphic was preferred by participants over all world-relative graphics, suggesting that graphic spatially integration into the world may not always be necessary in visually complex urban environments like those considered in this study.

A Systematic Review of Virtual Reality Applications for Automated Driving: 2009–2020

While virtual reality (VR) interfaces have been researched extensively over the last decades, studies on their application in vehicles have only recently advanced. In this paper, we systematically review 12 years of VR research in the context of automated driving (AD), from 2009 to 2020. Due to the multitude of possibilities for studies with regard to VR technology, at present, the pool of findings is heterogeneous and non-transparent. We investigated N = 176 scientific papers of relevant journals and conferences with the goal to analyze the status quo of existing VR studies in AD, and to classify the related literature into application areas. We provide insights into the utilization of VR technology which is applicable at specific level of vehicle automation and for different users (drivers, passengers, pedestrians) and tasks. Results show that most studies focused on designing automotive experiences in VR, safety aspects, and vulnerable road users. Trust, simulator and motion sickness, and external human-machine interfaces (eHMIs) also marked a significant portion of the published papers, however a wide range of different parameters was investigated by researchers. Finally, we discuss a set of open challenges, and give recommendation for future research in automated driving at the VR side of the reality-virtuality continuum.

The Application of Augmented Reality in the Automotive Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Augmented reality (AR) is a fairly new technology enabling human machine interaction by superimposing virtual information on a real environment. Potential applications can be found in many areas of research from recent years. This study presents a systematic review of existing AR systems in the automotive field, synthesizing 55 studies from 2002 to 2019. The main research questions are: where AR technology has been applied within the automotive industry, what is the purpose of its application, what are the general characteristics of these systems, and what are the emphasized benefits and challenges of using AR in this field? The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into the AR applications and technologies in the automotive field.