Extending the Egocentric Viewpoint in Situated Visualization Using Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has the ability to display and interact with additional information aligned with the real world and to support context-driven visualization techniques. Situated Visualization (SV) is a method to represent data in a context that encompasses all the visualizations that change their appearance based on context. Therefore, since AR is typically used so that the user can visualize extra information regarding the surrounding real world environment, this technology is well suited for SV and presents high potential in many situations, as are the cases of collaborative/assistive tasks in the maintenance area and supporting decision-making. AR-based visualizations are commonly constrained to the users' unique egocentric view-point, which reduces their ability to explore all the richness of available information. This limitation is particularly evident in situations that require overviews of all information inside and out of the user's field of view (FOV). This article proposes multi-perspective renderings, transitional interfaces, and the use of multimodal information as methods to extend the user's egocentric viewpoint. The main idea is to coherently present and augment, in the same user's display, dynamic and static feeds of several real and virtual egocentric viewpoints, related to and relevant for the user's task.