Danger from the Deep: A Gap Affordance Study in Augmented Reality

It is an open question as to whether people perceive and act in augmented reality environments in the same way that they do in real environments. The current work investigated participants' judgments of whether or not they could act on an obstacle portrayed with augmented reality. Specifically, we presented gaps of varying widths and depths to participants in augmented reality using the Microsoft HoloLens. We asked users to indicate whether or not they believed that they could step across the virtual gaps given their widths and depths. Averaging across changes in width and depth, users generally underestimated their abilities to cross gaps. However, this underestimation was significantly greater when the gaps were deep. Thus, our findings suggest that users in augmented reality respond with more conservative judgments when presented with risky stimuli-a response that mimics real world behavior. Their altered reactions to deeper gaps may provide early evidence for augmented reality's capacity to evoke a sense of realism or immersion and its use in evaluating perception and action.