Better Situational Awareness in AR-HRC? A Comparative Study of Augmented Reality and Mobile Interfaces for Human-Robot Collaboration

What the study found

AR improved only perception-level awareness of the robot. It gave no gain in comprehension or projection, and no gain in awareness of the surrounding environment at any level. Eye tracking showed that attention freed from the map went to AR graphics rather than to the physical room.

Limitations

Preprint; small groups; Magic Leap 2 field of view restricted environmental viewing; some probes were easy or helped by sound cues.

Neurodesign interpretation

People who looked up from the phone mostly looked at the AR graphics, and the room got little of that attention. Digital signage and projected wayfinding carry the same risk as headsets.

Possible design implications

Moving information off a phone and into the visual field does not return attention to the space. Wayfinding, safety and AR overlays in buildings need to direct gaze to the physical environment on purpose.

Why it stays in the corpus

Retain despite preprint status for the attentional-displacement finding.

Study design

Between-subjects experiment with SAGAT probes and eye tracking

Population

30 adults (mean age 25.6), 15 per group

Setting

Search-and-rescue style task with a quadruped robot in a cluttered 9 x 7 m room

Field

Human-computer interaction, gaze allocation

Mechanism

Attentional displacement, situational awareness

Spatial variable

Where information is placed: head-mounted AR overlay vs handheld screen

Keywords

augmented reality, situational awareness, eye tracking, attentional displacement, preprint

Notes and follow-up

Preprint. Recheck for peer-reviewed version and update the record.