The Real-Life Dangers of Augmented Reality 52
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."
This could lead to class action lawsuits (Score:4, Funny)
http://i.imgur.com/j2WzJdj.png [imgur.com]
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You're a real Jerk and owe me and my friends 10 million dollars in damages.
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I want my check for one dollar and NINE CENTS!
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Wearing glasses that cover up large portions of your view might cover up something important.
That explains Imperial Stormtroopers, then.
This happened to me (Score:4, Insightful)
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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Just one time? This happens every time I'm at a stoplight and the cars next to me start creeping while I'm on an incline with a manual transmission. I always have to check to make sure my foot is securely pressed on the brake pedal. It also happens when someone next to me with a manual transmission rolls backwards while I'm driving an automatic. It gives me the sensation of moving forward, and again, I have to make sure my foot is on the brake and that I'm not inching forward. I also notice this in par
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I reckon a bus station would be the same diff.
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When I was a kid we used to pull up around adults in their cars, then simultaneously start to roll our cars backwards. Just to watch the panic on their faces.
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There's always idiots who want to make money running studies and put themselves in a position of being the arbiters of what should or should not be, but in most cases we can safely ignore them.
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I'm utterly impressed with the expertise level the random slashdot user possesses.
Being able to dismiss anyone's study as being written by idiots without even reading the study (as typical on /.), that's really amazing!
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Augmented reality glasses with a simple connection to a smart phone, smart phone does all the processing and supplies power, are very much more likely to be on the scene before they sort out insurance on automated vehicles. Most likely around the time it is legislated that only licensed opticians can fit and supply augmented reality glasses. It should not be up to tech companies to finalise the design of that particular bit of kit but up to Ophthalmologists and Optometrists.
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Seriously, by the time untethered augmented reality becomes a thing, automated cars will be the norm and you won't be able to get yourself run over if you tried. ;-)
Yes, because there are no other potentially dangerous situations except ones involving cars.
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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.
Yeah, I think peripheral vision is just some great big liberal anti-free market conspiracy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Stubbing your toe (Score:2)
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... (Score:2)
The REAL real-life dangers of virtual reality (Score:1)
You should ask these two [wikipedia.org] what the real dangers are.
Even more interesting... (Score:1)
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
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The real life dangers of real life... (Score:2)
Authors have never heard of accelerometers (Score:3)
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.
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Well guess what you can obtain from monitoring the acceleration.
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Yes, you can obtain the speed by integrating the acceleration but with small, consumer-level hardware, the drift will quickly make the results unusable. Even million dollar inertial navigation systems like we find in some military vehicles must be complemented by other sources to stay accurate.
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Do you not know the laws of motion and calculus? Because those make me question your expertise as a critic.
Even assuming that your accelerometers are perfect (which they most assuredly are not), tracking accelleration over time gives you an assumed speed plus an unknown constant, which you are assuming is zero.
But you know the old saying about assumptions...
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From a human locomotion point of view, people do not normally glide around on ice rinks while using AR. All you need to monitor is translational vibration (evidence of non-rotational movement) which will be present regardless if you are walking or driving.
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Simply, no. It's not pedantic. Because you ignore that your accelerometers are not perfect, that your constant is a variable due to accumulated error in your accelerometers, that you need not glide around on an ice rink in order for your generally-increasing (magnitude) accumulated error to make that constant an unknown variable, and that GPS solves that problem quite nicely
ok, psychological effects, but (Score:2)
there's likely heath effects too. For example, those FPV drone goggles [tmart.com], 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.
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For definitions of 'likely' equal to 'causes effects in hypochondriacs, can't be reproduced in double blind tests.'
Augmented Reality? (Score:2)
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?
yes (Score:2)
Lessons from head-up displays (Score:2)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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, effect
Okay, question: (Score:2)
Interfering with peripheral vision, really? (Score:1)
> 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.