In this study, the researchers illuminated the positive advantages of incorporating augmented reality (AR) technology into the daily practices of service engineers working in an advanced manufacturing environment. AR technology improved the user’s communication with colleagues and content experts through real-time video conferencing and brought valuable information directly to the user on a mobile platform. This effective communication had the potential to reduce the time it takes to complete a work task, even when the user is in a remote location. However, it could not be assumed that people would be willing to use this new technology just because it was available. In order to promote the positive advantages of incorporating AR technology into the daily practices of service engineers, more research was needed to assess the user’s perceived value of AR technology and their willingness to accept AR technology into their daily tasks. The purpose of this research was to demonstrate the advantages of using augmented reality technology to improve communication and access to information as well as to assess the acceptance and use of this technology based on the behavioral intentions of a trained engineer. Using that information and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology including its extensions (UTAUT and UTAUT2) (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003; Venkatesh, 2012) this research determined if AR technology is viable for larger scale adoption.

The main aim of this thesis was to evaluate the performance of the contrast sensitivity clock (CSC), a new screening device for measuring contrast sensitivity (CS) and glare. This device allows CS without glare, with glare and disability glare scores to be recorded. After initial data collection the design of the CSC was slightly amended improving the performance of the device. The amended design of the CSC was shown to be a valid, discriminative and repeatable measure for purpose. The CSC is also a quick test to perform and is relatively cheap to produce. If all these factors are considered it shows potential to become the test of choice for the assessment of visual glare. A head-mounted display system was also evaluated in terms of the glare effects it may cause. The monocular display screen of the device significantly reduced the CS of the eye directly exposed but also had an effect on binocular performance, reducing amounts of binocular summation. Electronic devices, including head-mounted displays and satellite navigation systems can seriously affect CS at low luminance levels, similar to those found when driving at night.

In this thesis research, we investigate the usability of hand-held display (Tablet PC) and wearable head-mounted display (Google Glass) interfaces and their effect on doctor-patient interaction during clinical ward round in the hospital. We looked at existing literature to identify existing research about our topic. Using a User Centered Interaction Design process we developed a prototype hybrid system that used both a hand-held and head-mounted display. An evaluation of this prototype with a hand-held system and a paper based interface was performed in a simulated patient room with 20 doctors and 5 patients. The participants were observed, surveyed, and interviewed about their experiences. Generally, the patients had a high satisfaction rate and felt the interfaces were not causing the doctors to lose focus on them. The doctors found the hand-held display by itself and existing paper-based interface to be the most usable and least distracting interfaces for accessing patient information during clinical ward rounds.

Zugl.: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2007.

Submitted by Patricia Figuti Venturini (pfiguti@anhembi.br) on 2018-10-17T14:15:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Felipe Servilha Moreno.pdf: 3335435 bytes, checksum: 145a8c05a54a0fe851645612ac3962d4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Patricia Figuti Venturini (pfiguti@anhembi.br) on 2018-10-17T18:36:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Felipe Servilha Moreno.pdf: 3335435 bytes, checksum: 145a8c05a54a0fe851645612ac3962d4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Patricia Figuti Venturini (pfiguti@anhembi.br) on 2018-10-17T18:37:54Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Felipe Servilha Moreno.pdf: 3335435 bytes, checksum: 145a8c05a54a0fe851645612ac3962d4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-17T18:38:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Felipe Servilha Moreno.pdf: 3335435 bytes, checksum: 145a8c05a54a0fe851645612ac3962d4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The technological evolution of HMDs is responsible for making devices available that are lighter, cheaper and more operational, as well as being aware of the risks of cybersicness. Cybersickness involves a range of symptoms similar to those of motion sickness, which affects a significant number of users and is currently regarded as one of the main obstacles to virtual reality helmets in the market. The focal point of this dissertation is on merging the fields of knowledge of Neuroscience and Games Design as a strategy for mitigating the symptoms of cybersickness. It sets out the results obtained from an experiment carried out with two groups of volunteers – heavy and low users of games for HMDs. These results underpin the sensory rearrangement theory and point out the kind of design choices that can trigger the symptoms of cybersickness. As a result, it is becoming possible to design games by predicting the design decisions required to overcome the problem of this malady. / A evolução tecnológica dos HMDs é responsável por disponibilizar aparelhos mais leves, baratos e funcionais, bem como pela visibilidade do cybersickness. O cybersickness consiste em um conjunto de sintomas semelhantes à cinetose, que afeta um percentual expressivo dos usuários e se configura atualmente como um dos maiores impeditivos à consolidação dos capacetes de realidade virtual no mercado. Esta dissertação enfoca a cooperação entre os campos de conhecimento da Neurociência e do Design de Games como estratégia à redução dos sintomas do cybersickness. Apresenta e discute resultados obtidos em experimento realizado com dois grupos de voluntários, heavy user e low user de jogos para HMDs. Tais resultados reforçam a teoria do rearranjo sensorial e apontam as escolhas de design que desencadearam os sintomas de cybersickness. Com isso, passa a ser possível ao designer de games antever decisões projetuais capazes de contribuir à superação do cybersickness.

Videoconferencing is one of the most common telepresence methods today and educational videos is rising in popularity among distance learners. Traditional videoconferencing is unable to convey gestures and mutual eye contact between participants. This study aim to propose a Virtual Reality telepresence solution using game engines. A literature study confirmed the effectiveness achieved in VR is comparable to the effectiveness in face-to-face meetings. The suggested solution implements whiteboard functionality from a real-life perspective, confirming it is possible to include new functionality and directly transfer old functionality to the VR system from the communication systems today. The system was evaluated based on the response time, packet loss, bandwidth, frame rate and through user tests. The evaluation shows it is possible to design a telepresence system with VR capable of passing the Turing Test for Telepresence. The participants of the user tests did not experience discomfort and they were positively inclined to the telepresence system. Though, discomfort may emerge if the VR character is used with a common office workstation. Future studies in this topic would involve modifications of the third person camera, making the head's rotation follow the direction of the camera view and implementing movable eye pupils on the VR character using the upcoming eye-tracking accessory.

Interaction with unmanned ground vehicles have traditionally been done through a lap-top based system. New technology is on the rise which can provide new benefits to operating soldiers, with superimposed information and a more lightweight control unit, namely augmented reality. Designing interfaces for augmented reality systems have seen an improvement but has yet to be widely implemented in various domains. Satisfaction and high user acceptance are aspects that have been identified to be factors for success in the field of human-robot interaction. This thesis intends to explore interface design solutions for interactions with unmanned ground vehicles through augmented reality in head-mounted displays. This has been done through an iterative design process in the form of concept generation and prototyping. The produced prototype has then been evaluated with users to find usability issues and to measure the potential in the prototype to be satisfactory and have a high user acceptance. The evaluation resulted in eight usability issues of which three was critical. The three usability issues are (1) Video module was placed too far down of the user’s view, (2) Difficulties to find modules outside of the view, and (3) Crucial information to distinguish units was non-existent. The prototype did show signs of having potential of being satisfactory and have a high user acceptance, although there are issues which still need to be resolved before this user interface could be used by the military. It is a first step towards integrating augmented reality as a tool when interacting with UGV.

Smartphones are used today to accomplish a variety of different tasks, but it has some issues that might be solved with new technology. Augmented Reality is a developing technology that in the future can be used in our daily lives to solve some of the problems that smartphones have. Before people will adopt the new augmented technology it is important to have an intuitive method to interact with it. Hand gesturing has always been a vital part of human interaction. Using hand gestures to interact with devices has the potential to be a more natural and familiar method than traditional methods, such as keyboards, controllers, and computer mice. The aim of this thesis is to explore whether hand gesture recognition in an Augmented Reality head-mounted display can provide the same interaction possibilities as a smartphone touchscreen. This was done by implementing an application in Unity that mimics an interface of a smartphone, but uses hand gestures as input in AR. The Leap Motion Controller was the device used to perform hand gesture recognition. To test how practical hand gestures are as an interaction method, text typing was chosen as the task to be used to measure this, as it is used in many applications on smartphones. Thus, the results can be better generalized to real world usage.Five different keyboards were designed and tested in a pilot study. A controlled experiment was conducted, in which 12 participants tried two hand gesturing keyboards and a touchscreen keyboard. This was done to compare how hand gestures compare to touchscreen interaction. In the experiment, participants wrote words using the keyboards, while their completion time and accuracy was recorded. After using a keyboard, a questionnaire was completed by the participants to measure the usability.  The results consists of an implementation of five different keyboards, and data collected from the experiment. The data gathered from the experiment consists of completion time, accuracy, and usability derived from questionnaire responses. Statistical tests were used to determine statistical significance between the keyboards used in the experiment. The results are presented in graphs and tables. The results show that typing with pinch gestures in augmented reality is a slow and tiresome way of typing and affects the users completion time and accuracy negatively, in relation to using a touchscreen. The lower completion time, and higher usability, of the touchscreen keyboard could be determined with statistical significance. Prediction and auto-completion might help with fatigue as fewer key presses are needed to create a word. The research concludes that hand gestures are reasonable to use as input technique to accomplish certain tasks that a smartphone performs. These include simple tasks such as scrolling through a website or opening an email. However, tasks that involve typing long sentences, e.g. composing an email, is arduous using pinch gestures. When it comes to typing, the authors advice developers to employ a continuous gesture typing approach such as Swype for Android and iOS.

The current push from the industry for Head-Mounted Display based wearable computers to the masses for everyday use suggests that academia's goals of a tight human and computer integration is achievable. Although promising, many interaction challenges remain to achieve a deep integration. Primarily that of active cognitive support in the form of focusing user attention. This thesis investigates to what degree a system can unobtrusively, perhaps even subliminally, guide attention of a user by directing their gaze from a current point to a selected point in a virtual environment. A subjective evaluation is made regarding the characteristics of visual sensory stimuli in order to possibly achieve an unobtrusive (or even subliminal) gaze guidance. The attention guidance system developed is deployed in a controlled experiment with 30 participants. Participants are asked to fire a longbow at targets in a virtual reality environment while their point of gaze is monitored with an eye-tracker. The experiment produced interesting results, but no conclusive evidence that the system was able actively guide a user's attention nor influence their choice could be observed. The conclusion of this thesis is that further development is needed towards a system that is capable of objectively calibrating the stimuli characteristics for each individual participant.

The main aim of this thesis was to evaluate the performance of the contrast sensitivity clock (CSC), a new screening device for measuring contrast sensitivity (CS) and glare. This device allows CS without glare, with glare and disability glare scores to be recorded. After initial data collection the design of the CSC was slightly amended improving the performance of the device. The amended design of the CSC was shown to be a valid, discriminative and repeatable measure for purpose. The CSC is also a quick test to perform and is relatively cheap to produce. If all these factors are considered it shows potential to become the test of choice for the assessment of visual glare. A head-mounted display system was also evaluated in terms of the glare effects it may cause. The monocular display screen of the device significantly reduced the CS of the eye directly exposed but also had an effect on binocular performance, reducing amounts of binocular summation. Electronic devices, including head-mounted displays and satellite navigation systems can seriously affect CS at low luminance levels, similar to those found when driving at night.