Assessing Augmented Reality Selection Techniques for Passengers in Moving Vehicles: A Real-World User Study

TL;DR

This study evaluates augmented reality selection techniques for passengers in moving vehicles, finding eye gaze as the most preferred and effective method among several tested in real-world conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a real-world user study comparing multiple AR selection techniques for in-vehicle use, highlighting the effectiveness of eye gaze interaction.

Findings

Eye gaze was preferred by participants.

Hand pointing was slower and less precise.

Eye gaze performed on par with other techniques.

Abstract

Nowadays, cars offer many possibilities to explore the world around you by providing location-based information displayed on a 2D-Map. However, this information is often only available to front-seat passengers while being restricted to in-car displays. To propose a more natural way of interacting with the environment, we implemented an augmented reality head-mounted display to overlay points of interest onto the real world. We aim to compare multiple selection techniques for digital objects located outside a moving car by investigating head gaze with dwell time, head gaze with hardware button, eye gaze with hardware button, and hand pointing with gesture confirmation. Our study was conducted in a moving car under real-world conditions (N=22), with significant results indicating that hand pointing usage led to slower and less precise content selection while eye gaze was preferred by participants and performed on par with the other techniques.