Interactive dirt: increasing mobile work performance with a wearable projector-camera system

  • Authors:
  • Daniel C. McFarlane;Steven M. Wilder

  • Affiliations:
  • Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA;Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Mobile teamwork requires people to maintain good situational awareness (SA) about their real world environments. Current mobile devices are highly portable, but their user interfaces (UIs) require too deep of focus of attention to allow their users to use them and simultaneously maintain SA. As a result, some mobile practitioners have little or no access to useful computer-based interactive services. Inspired by existing projector-camera systems, this paper studies the feasibility of developing a wearable projector-camera system that enables users to access human-computer interaction (HCI) services without negatively affecting their SA. A functional prototype of the "Interactive Dirt" system was developed using inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf technologies. A field experiment was conducted as a formative evaluation to test the utility of the prototype under extreme mobile teamwork requirements for SA--military stability and support operations (SASO). Results show strong potential to increase performance of mobile teams.