AR Collision Avoidance via Sensor Fusion and Attention Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users engaging with augmented reality environments often neglect their physical surroundings, leading to potential hazards and accidents due to lack of attention to the real world while interacting with virtual objects.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that utilize a mobile computing device to detect hazards, determine user attention, and provide notifications through various feedback mechanisms, including visual, auditory, and haptic alerts, by combining data from image sensors, accelerometers, and object recognition algorithms to ensure the user's safety while navigating in AR environments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If users engage with augmented reality environments, then their immersion in virtual objects is improved, but their awareness of physical surroundings deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors user position, orientation, and movement through sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, camera) and provides real-time feedback by detecting hazards in the physical environment. When hazards are detected within a threshold distance, the system alerts the user through visual, auditory, or haptic feedback mechanisms, creating a closed-loop safety system that operates alongside the AR experience without breaking immersion.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary safety system that acts as a mediator between the user's AR engagement and physical safety. This intermediary layer processes sensor data, identifies hazards, and delivers warnings through multiple channels, allowing users to maintain AR immersion while being protected from physical dangers through automated monitoring and alerting.
2Productivity
If users focus attention on the display for AR interaction, then their engagement with virtual content is improved, but their attention to physical hazards deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-service safety monitoring by automatically detecting user attention state and physical hazards without requiring user action. The device uses its own sensors (camera, accelerometer, gyroscope) to track user gaze, position, and orientation, and autonomously identifies hazards in the environment, providing safety protection while the user remains engaged with AR content.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary safety checks by continuously monitoring the user's surroundings and attention state before collisions or hazards occur. By detecting hazards in advance and alerting the user proactively, the system prevents potential accidents before they happen, maintaining both AR engagement and safety.
3Reliability
If the system provides continuous hazard monitoring, then safety is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent achieves multi-functionality by using existing mobile device components (camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, processor) for both AR rendering and safety monitoring purposes. The same sensors that track user movement for AR interaction also detect hazards and monitor user attention, eliminating the need for separate dedicated safety hardware and reducing overall system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges the safety monitoring function with the existing AR application framework. The hazard detection algorithm integrates with the camera processing pipeline, and the alert system combines with the existing display and audio outputs, creating a unified system that handles both AR engagement and safety monitoring through shared hardware and software resources.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Effectively alerts users to nearby hazards, reducing the risk of accidents by redirecting their attention to the physical environment and maintaining awareness of their surroundings, even when focused on virtual experiences.
Implementation Method 1
an image sensor to capture an image of the user's eye
Implementation Method 2
an accelerometer to detect motion of the mobile computing device
Data Source
AI summary
A collision avoidance system within an augmented reality environment determines a hazard and notifies the user of the hazard. By determining that the attention of the user is focused on the mobile computing device, and that there is a hazardous condition that the user is approaching, the device provides an alert to the user as to the hazardous condition to protect the user from the hazard. Known hazardous conditions can be stored and provided to a mobile computing device when that mobile computing device is within the vicinity of the known hazardous conditions. The system can also create geofences and provide notifications to the user when a boundary is approached or crossed.