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The Real-Life Dangers of Augmented Reality
Tekla Perry writes: Today's augmented reality devices have yet to go through extensive tests of their impact on their wearers' health and safety. But by looking at existing research involving visual and motor impairments, two Kaiser Permanente researchers find they can draw conclusions about the promise and perils of augmented reality, and point to ways wearable developers can make these devices safer. The researchers write: "Peripheral vision is more important than you might think, because it provides a wealth of information about speed and distance from objects. Central vision, despite the great detail it offers, gives you only a rough estimate of movement toward or away from you, based on changes in size or in the parallax angle between your eyes. But objects moving within your peripheral vision stimulate photoreceptors from the center of the retina to the edge, providing much better information about the speed of motion. Your brain detects objects in your peripheral field and evaluates if and how they (or you) are moving. Interfering with this process can cause you to misjudge relative motion and could cause you to stumble; it might even get you hit by a car one day."
They don't even test these glasses on prisoners!
http://i.imgur.com/j2WzJdj.png
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Wearing glasses that cover up large portions of your view might cover up something important. Gifs at 11!
I was in my parked car (angled parking), started my car and I was ready to back up. Before I touched any controls, I had the feeling my car was going forward because the van to my left started backing up but I didn't realize it. My brain was telling me "we're going forward" so for a second or two I panicked and pressed on the brakes as hard as I could and was wondering "why am I still moving?", because I didn't want to run over someone.
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there's always idiots who see all the worst of it, the worst that have little to no chance of ever happening.
As a researcher I can confirm this augmented reality threat is limited to a small minority of individuals. Peripheral vision, for example, has been entirely advanced out of the human genome for the average New Jersey driver. While judgements in relative motion are key for some individuals, the average floridian will be keen to realize movement, perceived or not, is irrelevant on highway 27 as the road itself seems to be immune to the passage of time while in a motor vehicle. Californians should not concern themselves with wearable technology and its impact upon vision and cognitive processes related to distance, as the technology will almost certainly be obsolete by the time they exit the 405 freeway.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If the cars are self driving, they can avoid hitting you :)
Stubbing one's toe is a potentially life-threatening incident.
Did the paper address this? I would think that the risk of stubbing one's toe would be much higher while wearing AR glasses.
We need more papers like this one. The complete and total characterization of all potential safety issues should be a reasonable goal before anyone is allowed to sell (or wear) one of these devices.
Maybe the FDA should issue a ban while it considers common-sense regulation (like the FAA did for drones).
When glasshole gets hit by a car due to not paying attention, it is karma and product feature.
You should ask these two what the real dangers are.
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Happened to catch a bit of the show "Brain Games" last night. They were showing a bit on putting people in glasses which offset their vision by 30 degrees from straight ahead. Tripping and stumbling soon ensued, but after a while, their 'neural plasticity' offset the effect and they were walking as normal. Though when the glasses were removed, another period of tripping and stumbling was encountered as their brains adjusted to normal vision once again.
Ergo, some VR issues might actually take place AFTER the headset is removed if your brain starts to treat the VR world as normal.
and why any sane person would avoid it. News at 11.
The GPS receivers built into wearables already detect the speed of motion (at least outdoors); designers could use them to stop notifications when the user is moving. And many AR wearables have cameras, so image analysis could likewise trigger a safety mode indoors in situations likely to cause trouble.
Do the authors not know what accelerometers are? That makes me question their expertise for writing about this subject.
there's likely heath effects too. For example, those FPV drone goggles, with the dual 2.4 antennas and receiver, hitting a 500mW transmitter are likely not that good being 1/4" from your head, pressed on your temples, with a 500mAh battery pressed against the back of your head too.
R u sure? I think you may have started something.
Sounds like a misnomer- distracted reality is more like it.
Eventually we could have little VR bots going to the mall or work for us instead of our corporeal being leaving the house, but is this reality?
love is just extroverted narcissism
lets wear my vision blocking headset by a busy road. the sad part this had to be said because some retard will.
There are several big problems with AR in the real world. These are well known in the head-up display (HUD) community and are going to surface in consumer AR scenarios too. The biggest problem is cognitive capture, where you ignore important details in the real world in favor of AR imagery. I've seen this in research studies and it is a nasty piece of work. Thankfully, these were simulator lab studies.
The next problem is more subtle but still problematic. AR imagery can mask things in the real world, effectively blinding you even if you are looking. If the pop-up window covers the oncoming car, you're out of luck even if the image is see through. A similar problem is focal length. In wearable tech, the AR image is likely to be hovering some fraction of a meter away from you in terms of focal length. Very few things are at that focal distance so you'll have to refocus constantly when looking at the real world. This takes time and reduces awareness of things out in the world. Refocusing is not an issue for pilots since the HUD image is set close to optical infinity and nothing should ever get that close when you're flying. In cars, the focal length is often near the front bumper. That's not ideal, but you can't spend commercial jet or fighter plane money on consumer automotive HUDs.
In short, you're going to miss threats and react slowly to them when you actually see them.
Why aren't people constantly dying of wearing sunglasses?
The cofounder and lead engineer of Oculus Rift, Andrew Scott Reisse was hit by car while crossing an intersection in June of 2013 in Santa Ana.
> Your brain detects objects in your peripheral field and evaluates if and how they (or you) are moving. Interfering with this process can cause you to misjudge relative motion and could cause you to stumble; it might even get you hit by a car one day."
Really? With the tiny FOV existing and future AR glasses are using (17 for Google Glass, ~40 for HoloLens and Magic Leap) how is it supposed to interfere with peripheral vision? The human field of view is ~270 horizontal.
In Moslem countries there is a high incidence of women wearing burkas to be hit by cars, prorbably for this reason.