Perception-Driven Soft-Edge Occlusion for Optical See-Through Head-Mounted Displays.

Systems with occlusion capabilities, such as those used in vision augmentation, image processing, and optical see-through head-mounted display (OST-HMD), have gained popularity. Achieving precise (hard-edge) occlusion in these systems is challenging, often requiring complex optical designs and bulky volumes. On the other hand, utilizing a single transparent liquid crystal display (LCD) is a simple approach to create occlusion masks.

Unobtrusive Refractive Power Monitoring: Using EOG to Detect Blurred Vision.

The rise in population and aging has led to a significant increase in the number of individuals affected by common causes of vision loss. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to avoid the consequences of visual impairment. However, in early stages, many visual problems are making it difficult to detect.

HazARdSnap: Gazed-Based Augmentation Delivery for Safe Information Access While Cycling.

During cycling activities, cyclists often monitor a variety of information such as heart rate, distance, and navigation using a bike-mounted phone or cyclocomputer. In many cases, cyclists also ride on sidewalks or paths that contain pedestrians and other obstructions such as potholes, so monitoring information on a bike-mounted interface can slow the cyclist down or cause accidents and injury. In this article, we present HazARdSnap, an augmented reality-based information delivery approach that improves the ease of access to cycling information and at the same time preserves the user's awareness of hazards.

Integration of Independent Heat Transfer Mechanisms for Non-Contact Cold Sensation Presentation With Low Residual Heat.

Thermal sensation is crucial to enhancing our comprehension of the world and enhancing our ability to interact with it. Therefore, the development of thermal sensation presentation technologies holds significant potential, providing a novel method of interaction. Traditional technologies often leave residual heat in the system or the skin, affecting subsequent presentations.

Identification of Language-Induced Mental Load from Eye Behaviors in Virtual Reality.

Experiences of virtual reality (VR) can easily break if the method of evaluating subjective user states is intrusive. Behavioral measures are increasingly used to avoid this problem. One such measure is eye tracking, which recently became more standard in VR and is often used for content-dependent analyses.

Effects of AR-Based Home Appliance Agents on User's Perception and Maintenance Behavior.

Maintenance of home appliances can be tedious. Maintenance work can be physically demanding and it is not always easy to know the cause of a malfunctioning appliance. Many users need to motivate themselves to perform maintenance work and consider it ideal for home appliances to be maintenance-free.

Add-on Occlusion: Turning Off-the-Shelf Optical See-through Head-mounted Displays Occlusion-capable.

The occlusion-capable optical see-through head-mounted display (OC-OSTHMD) is actively developed in recent years since it allows mutual occlusion between virtual objects and the physical world to be correctly presented in augmented reality (AR). However, implementing occlusion with the special type of OSTHMDs prevents the appealing feature from the wide application. In this paper, a novel approach for realizing mutual occlusion for common OSTHMDs is proposed.

The Effects of Speed-Modulated Visual Stimuli Seen through Smart Glasses on Work Efficiency after Viewing.

It is known that subjective time and work efficiency are affected by visual stimuli. However, existing studies only consider the effects of visual information on the user during viewing and ignore the after effects. Using smart glasses lets users see visual information while moving until just before arriving at the office or school.

Multisensory Proximity and Transition Cues for Improving Target Awareness in Narrow Field of View Augmented Reality Displays.

Augmented reality applications allow users to enrich their real surroundings with additional digital content. However, due to the limited field of view of augmented reality devices, it can sometimes be difficult to become aware of newly emerging information inside or outside the field of view. Typical visual conflicts like clutter and occlusion of augmentations occur and can be further aggravated especially in the context of dense information spaces.

Optical see-through augmented reality displays with wide field of view and hard-edge occlusion by using paired conical reflectors.

Optical see-through head-mounted displays are actively developed in recent years. An appropriate method for mutual occlusion is essential to provide a decent user experience in many application scenarios of augmented reality. However, existing mutual occlusion methods fail to work well with a large field of view (FOV).

Head-Mounted Display with Increased Downward Field of View Improves Presence and Sense of Self-Location.

Common existing head-mounted displays (HMDs) for virtual reality (VR) provide users with a high presence and embodiment. However, the field of view (FoV) of a typical HMD for VR is about 90 to 110 [deg] in the diagonal direction and about 70 to 90 [deg] in the vertical direction, which is narrower than that of humans. Specifically, the downward FoV of conventional HMDs is too narrow to present the user avatar's body and feet.

Computational Phase-Modulated Eyeglasses.

We present computational phase-modulated eyeglasses, a see-through optical system that modulates the view of the user using phase-only spatial light modulators (PSLM). A PSLM is a programmable reflective device that can selectively retardate, or delay, the incoming light rays. As a result, a PSLM works as a computational dynamic lens device.

Recurrent Neural Network for Inertial Gait User Recognition in Smartphones.

In this article, a gait recognition algorithm is presented based on the information obtained from inertial sensors embedded in a smartphone, in particular, the accelerometers and gyroscopes typically embedded on them. The algorithm processes the signal by extracting gait cycles, which are then fed into a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to generate feature vectors. To optimize the accuracy of this algorithm, we apply a random grid hyperparameter selection process followed by a hand-tuning method to reach the final hyperparameter configuration.

Light Attenuation Display: Subtractive See-Through Near-Eye Display via Spatial Color Filtering.

We present a display for optical see-through near-eye displays based on light attenuation, a new paradigm that forms images by spatially subtracting colors of light. Existing optical see-through head-mounted displays (OST-HMDs) form virtual images in an additive manner-they optically combine the light from an embedded light source such as a microdisplay into the users' field of view (FoV). Instead, our light attenuation display filters the color of the real background light pixel-wise in the users' see-through view, resulting in an image as a spatial color filter.

The Influence of Label Design on Search Performance and Noticeability in Wide Field of View Augmented Reality Displays.

In Augmented Reality (AR), search performance for outdoor tasks is an important metric for evaluating the success of a large number of AR applications. Users must be able to find content quickly, labels and indicators must not be invasive but still clearly noticeable, and the user interface should maximize search performance in a variety of conditions. To address these issues, we have set up a series of experiments to test the influence of virtual characteristics such as color, size, and leader lines on the performance of search tasks and noticeability in both real and simulated environments.

Force Rendering and its Evaluation of a Friction-Based Walking Sensation Display for a Seated User.

Most existing locomotion devices that represent the sensation of walking target a user who is actually performing a walking motion. Here, we attempted to represent the walking sensation, especially a kinesthetic sensation and advancing feeling (the sense of moving forward) while the user remains seated. To represent the walking sensation using a relatively simple device, we focused on the force rendering and its evaluation of the longitudinal friction force applied on the sole during walking.

Emulation of Physician Tasks in Eye-Tracked Virtual Reality for Remote Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative Disease.

For neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson's disease, early and accurate diagnosis is still a difficult task. Evaluations can be time consuming, patients must often travel to metropolitan areas or different cities to see experts, and misdiagnosis can result in improper treatment. To date, only a handful of assistive or remote methods exist to help physicians evaluate patients with suspected neurological disease in a convenient and consistent way.

Design and Psychophysical Evaluation of the HapSticks: A Novel Non-Grounded Mechanism for Presenting Tool-Mediated Vertical Forces.

Force feedback in tool-mediated interactions with the environment is important for the successful performance of complex tasks in daily life as well as in specialized fields such as medicine. Most stylus-based haptic devices require either grounding or attachment to the user's body. Recently, non-grounded haptic devices have attracted a growing interest.

Feature detection in biological tissues using multi-band and narrow-band imaging.

Purpose: In the past decade, augmented reality systems have been expected to support surgical operations by making it possible to view invisible objects that are inside or occluded by the skull, hands, or organs. However, the properties of biological tissues that are non-rigid and featureless require a large number of distributed features to track the movement of tissues in detail.

Methods: With the goal of increasing the number of feature points in organ tracking, we propose a feature detection using multi-band and narrow-band imaging and a new band selection method.

ModulAR: eye-controlled vision augmentations for head mounted displays.

In the last few years, the advancement of head mounted display technology and optics has opened up many new possibilities for the field of Augmented Reality. However, many commercial and prototype systems often have a single display modality, fixed field of view, or inflexible form factor. In this paper, we introduce Modular Augmented Reality (ModulAR), a hardware and software framework designed to improve flexibility and hands-free control of video see-through augmented reality displays and augmentative functionality.

Corneal-Imaging Calibration for Optical See-Through Head-Mounted Displays.

In recent years optical see-through head-mounted displays (OST-HMDs) have moved from conceptual research to a market of mass-produced devices with new models and applications being released continuously. It remains challenging to deploy augmented reality (AR) applications that require consistent spatial visualization. Examples include maintenance, training and medical tasks, as the view of the attached scene camera is shifted from the user's view.

A Wide-View Parallax-Free Eye-Mark Recorder with a Hyperboloidal Half-Silvered Mirror and Appearance-Based Gaze Estimation.

In this paper, we propose a wide-view parallax-free eye-mark recorder with a hyperboloidal half-silvered mirror and a gaze estimation method suitable for the device. Our eye-mark recorder provides a wide field-of-view video recording of the user's exact view by positioning the focal point of the mirror at the user's viewpoint. The vertical angle of view of the prototype is 122 degree (elevation and depression angles are 38 and 84 degree, respectively) and its horizontal view angle is 116 degree (nasal and temporal view angles are 38 and 78 degree, respectively).

3D user interfaces: new directions and perspectives.

Three-dimensional user interfaces (3D UIs) let users interact with virtual objects, environments, or information using direct 3D input in the physical and/or virtual space. In this article, the founders and organizers of the IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces reflect on the state of the art in several key aspects of 3D UIs and speculate on future research.