Work

Helping Helpers: Supporting Volunteers in Remote Sighted Assistance with Augmented Reality Maps

Year: 2022

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: ., agents, provide real-time assistance to blind users via video-chat-like communication. Prior work identified several challenges for the agents to provide navigational assistance to users and proposed computer vision-mediated RSA service to address those challenges. We present an interactive system implementing a high-fidelity prototype of RSA service using augmented reality (AR) maps with localization and virtual elements placement capabilities. The paper also presents a confederate-based study design to evaluate the effects of AR maps with 13 untrained agents. The study revealed that, compared to baseline RSA, agents were significantly faster in providing indoor navigational assistance to a confederate playing the role of users, and agents' mental workload was significantly reduced-all indicate the feasibility and scalability of AR maps in RSA services.

Source: Designing Interactive Systems Conference

DOI: 10.1145/3532106.3533560

Authors: Jingyi Xie, Rui Yu, Sooyeon Lee, Yao Lyu, Syed Masum Billah, John M. Carroll

Institutions: Pennsylvania State University, Rochester Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Augmented Reality Applications

Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Award: SCH: INT: Conversations for Vision: Human-Computer Synergies in Prosthetic Interactions