In 2008, Zhou et al. presented a survey paper summarizing the previous ten years of ISMAR publications, which provided invaluable insights into the research challenges and trends associated with that time period. Ten years later, we review the research that has been presented at ISMAR conferences since the survey of Zhou et al., at a time when both academia and the AR industry are enjoying dramatic technological changes. Here we consider the research results and trends of the last decade of ISMAR by carefully reviewing the ISMAR publications from the period of 2008–2017, in the context of the first ten years. The numbers of papers for different research topics and their impacts by citations were analyzed while reviewing them—which reveals that there is a sharp increase in AR evaluation and rendering research. Based on this review we offer some observations related to potential future research areas or trends, which could be helpful to AR researchers and industry members looking ahead.

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10105851

Revisiting Trends in Augmented Reality Research: A Review of the 2nd Decade of ISMAR (2008–2017)

Immersive analytics (IA) is a new term referring to the use of immersive technologies for data analysis. Yet such applications are not new, and numerous contributions have been made in the last three decades. However, no survey reviewing all these contributions is available. Here we propose a survey of IA from the early nineties until the present day, describing how rendering technologies, data, sensory mapping, and interaction means have been used to build IA systems, as well as how these systems have been evaluated. The conclusions that emerge from our analysis are that: multi-sensory aspects of IA are under-exploited, the 3DUI and VR community knowledge regarding immersive interaction is not sufficiently utilised, the IA community should focus on converging towards best practices, as well as aim for real life IA systems.

Survey of Immersive Analytics

We present MRTouch, a novel multitouch input solution for head-mounted mixed reality systems. Our system enables users to reach out and directly manipulate virtual interfaces affixed to surfaces in their environment, as though they were touchscreens. Touch input offers precise, tactile and comfortable user input, and naturally complements existing popular modalities, such as voice and hand gesture. Our research prototype combines both depth and infrared camera streams together with real-time detection and tracking of surface planes to enable robust finger-tracking even when both the hand and head are in motion. Our technique is implemented on a commercial Microsoft HoloLens without requiring any additional hardware nor any user or environmental calibration. Through our performance evaluation, we demonstrate high input accuracy with an average positional error of 5.4 mm and 95% button size of 16 mm, across 17 participants, 2 surface orientations and 4 surface materials. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of our technique to enable on-world touch interactions through 5 example applications.

MRTouch: Adding Touch Input to Head-Mounted Mixed Reality

Most of our daily activities take place in the physical world, which inherently imposes physical constraints. In contrast, the digital world is very flexible, but usually isolated from its physical counterpart. To combine these two realms, many Mixed Reality (MR) techniques have been explored, at different levels in the continuum. In this work we present an integrated Mixed Reality ecosystem that allows users to incrementally transition from pure physical to pure virtual experiences in a unique reality. This system stands on a conceptual framework composed of 6 levels. This paper presents these levels as well as the related interaction techniques.

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One Reality: Augmenting How the Physical World is Experienced by combining Multiple Mixed Reality Modalities

This paper introduces the use of Augmented Reality as an immersive analytical tool in the physical world. We present Situated Analytics, a novel combination of real-time interaction and visualization techniques that allows exploration and analysis of information about objects in the user's physical environment. Situated Analytics presents both situated and abstract summary and contextual information to a user. We conducted a user study to evaluate its use in three shopping analytics tasks, comparing the use of a Situated Analytics prototype with manual analysis. The results showed that users preferred the Situated Analytics prototype over the manual method, and that tasks were performed more quickly and accurately using the prototype.

Situated Analytics: Demonstrating immersive analytical tools with Augmented Reality

This paper presents the results of two cognitive load studies comparing three augmented reality display technologies: spatial augmented reality, the optical see-through Microsoft HoloLens, and the video see-through Samsung Gear VR. In particular, the two experiments focused on isolating the cognitive load cost of receiving instructions for a button-pressing procedural task. The studies employed a self-assessment cognitive load methodology, as well as an additional dual-task cognitive load methodology. The results showed that spatial augmented reality led to increased performance and reduced cognitive load. Additionally, it was discovered that a limited field of view can introduce increased cognitive load requirements. The findings suggest that some of the inherent restrictions of head-mounted displays materialize as increased user cognitive load.

Cognitive Cost of Using Augmented Reality Displays

Spatial augmented reality applies the concepts of spatial user interfaces to large-scale, projector-based augmented reality. Such virtual environments have interesting characteristics. They deal with large physical objects, the projection surfaces are nonplanar, the physical objects provide natural passive haptic feedback, and the systems naturally support collaboration between users. The article describes how these features affect the design of spatial user interfaces for these environments and explores promising research directions and application domains.

Spatial User Interfaces for Large-Scale Projector-Based Augmented Reality

Research into how virtual reality (VR) can be a beneficial technology for new and emerging large, complex data visualizations for data scientists is ongoing. In this paper, we evaluate three-dimensional VR navigation technique for data visualizations and test their effectiveness with a large graph visualization. We evaluate two prominent navigation techniques employed in VR (Teleportation and One-Handed Flying) against two less common methods (Two-Handed Flying and Worlds In Miniature) and evaluate their performance and effectiveness through a series of tasks. We found Steering Patterns (One-Handed Flying and Two-Handed Flying) to be faster and preferred by participants for completing searching tasks in comparision to Teleportation. Worlds-In-Miniature was the least physically demanding of the navigations, and was preferred by participants for tasks that required an overview of the graph such as triangle counting.

Evaluating Navigation Techniques for 3D Graph Visualizations in Virtual Reality

This paper introduces GeoGate, an Augmented Reality tabletop system that extends the Space-Time Cube and utilizes a ring-shaped tangible user interface to explore correlations between entities in multiple location datasets. We demonstrate GeoGate in the context of the maritime domain, where operators seek to find geo-temporal associations between trajectories recorded from a global positioning system, and light data extracted from night time satellite images. GeoGate utilizes a tabletop system displaying a traditional 2D map in conjunction with a Microsoft Hololens to present a single view of the data with a novel Augmented Reality extension of the Space-Time Cube. To validate GeoGate, we present the results of a user study comparing GeoGate with the existing 2D approach used in a normal desktop environment. The outcomes of the user study show that GeoGate's approach reduces mistakes in the interpretation of the correlations between various datasets, while the qualitative results show that such a system is preferable for the majority of geo-temporal maritime tasks compared.

GeoGate: Correlating Geo-Temporal Datasets Using an Augmented Reality Space-Time Cube and Tangible Interactions

Research into how virtual reality (VR) can be a beneficial technology for new and emerging large, complex data visualisations for data scientists is ongoing. In this paper, we evaluate three-dimensional VR navigation technique for data visualisations and test their effectiveness with a large graph visualisation. We evaluate two prominent navigation techniques employed in VR (Teleportation and One-Handed Flying) against two less common methods (Two-Handed Flying and Worlds-In-Miniature) and evaluate their performance and effectiveness through a series of tasks. We found Steering Patterns (One-Handed Flying and Two-Handed Flying) to be faster and preferred by participants for completing searching tasks in comparison to Teleportation. Worlds-In-Miniature was the least physically demanding of the navigations, and was preferred by participants for tasks that required an overview of the graph such as triangle counting.

James A. Walsh

Papers

Cognitive Cost of Using Augmented Reality Displays

Spatial User Interfaces for Large-Scale Projector-Based Augmented Reality

Evaluating Navigation Techniques for 3D Graph Visualizations in Virtual Reality

GeoGate: Correlating Geo-Temporal Datasets Using an Augmented Reality Space-Time Cube and Tangible Interactions

Examining virtual reality navigation techniques for 3D network visualisations