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Why, when and how to use augmented reality agents (AuRAs)

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Abstract

Over the last number of years, multiple research projects have begun to create augmented reality (AR) applications that use augmented reality agents, or AuRAs, as their principle interaction and development paradigm. This paper aims to address this new and distinct field of AuRAs by asking three questions: why should AuRAs be researched, when are they a useful paradigm, and how can they be developed? The first question explores the motivation behind applying AuRAs to AR. Specifically, it investigates whether AuRAs are purely an interaction paradigm, or whether they can also serve as a development paradigm, by outlining in which circumstances it is appropriate for a project to use AuRAs and where their addition would only add unnecessary complexity. A navigational experiment, performed in simulated AR, explores the second question of when AuRAs can be a useful concept in AR applications. Results from this experiment suggest that an embodied virtual character allows for faster navigation along a shorter route than directional arrows or marking the target with an AR “bubble”. An exploration of the limitations of the simulated AR environment illuminates how faithfully the experiment recreated the environmental challenges that AuRAs can help to address. Finally, the question of how to develop such applications is addressed through the introduction of the agent factory augmented reality toolkit that allows the rapid prototyping of such applications. Results from a usability study on the toolkit are also presented.

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Notes

  1. While similar systems have been deployed using robots as shopping guides (Black et al. 2009; Gharpure and Kulyukin 2008), they are quite common use cases for AR as well [e.g. the aforementioned ShopNavi (Nagao 1998) or the more recent PromoPad (Zhu and Owen 2008)].

  2. While it is an undecided issue whether presence scores can be compared between different experiments (Usoh et al. 2000), we believe they can nonetheless serve as a useful indicator of the level of immersion experienced by users.

  3. The supermarket used in the experiment was based on blueprints of award-winning designs to prevent any bias in its construction (Pegler 1990).

  4. The experiment software failed to record distance for some of the participants, which is why subject numbers and degrees of freedom are different for some of the distance statistics.

  5. http://www.oculusvr.com/.

  6. http://www.virtuix.com/.

  7. SUMI is a well-established commercial system that is referenced by the ISO 9241-11 standard (ISO 1998) as a method for testing user satisfaction.

  8. This is essentially the same objective given to participants that completed the user evaluation reported in the next section.

  9. A predicate is the overarching term for a statement of logic that an agent can process, be that a belief, plan or commitment rule.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by Science Foundation Ireland under Grant No. 07/CE/I1147. The authors would like to thank the reviewers whose suggestions and constructive feedback throughout the review process led to a greatly improved paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

    Abraham G. Campbell, Thomas Holz & G. M. P. O’Hare

  2. School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

    John W. Stafford

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  1. Abraham G. Campbell
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Correspondence to Abraham G. Campbell.

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Campbell, A.G., Stafford, J.W., Holz, T. et al. Why, when and how to use augmented reality agents (AuRAs). Virtual Reality 18, 139–159 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-013-0239-4

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