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."

Comments

This happened to me

[ArcadeMan]

Your brain detects objects in your peripheral field and evaluates if and how they (or you) are moving.

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.