HazARdSnap: Gazed-Based Augmentation Delivery for Safe Information Access While Cycling

During cycling activities, cyclists often monitor a variety of information such as heart rate, distance, and navigation using a bike-mounted phone or cyclocomputer. In many cases, cyclists also ride on sidewalks or paths that contain pedestrians and other obstructions such as potholes, so monitoring information on a bike-mounted interface can slow the cyclist down or cause accidents and injury. In this article, we present HazARdSnap, an augmented reality-based information delivery approach that improves the ease of access to cycling information and at the same time preserves the user's awareness of hazards. To do so, we implemented real-time outdoor hazard detection using a combination of computer vision and motion and position data from a head mounted display (HMD). We then developed an algorithm that snaps information to detected hazards when they are also viewed so that users can simultaneously view both rendered virtual cycling information and the real-world cues such as depth, position, time to hazard, and speed that are needed to assess and avoid hazards. Results from a study with 24 participants that made use of real-world cycling and virtual hazards showed that both HazARdSnap and forward-fixed augmented reality (AR) user interfaces (UIs) can effectively help cyclists access virtual information without having to look down, which resulted in fewer collisions (51% and 43% reduction compared to baseline, respectively) with virtual hazards.