Effects of Frame of Reference and Viewing Condition on Attentional Issues with Helmet Mounted Displays

摘要

Presentation of information using an helmet mounted display (HMD) allows users to view the world through a visor or eyepiece, on which additional data relevant to the task performed, can be superimposed onto the forward field of view. In the research presented here, the issues of frame of reference and viewing condition (i.e., one eye versus two) are examined in order to determine their effects on tasks of focused and divided attention. Superimposing information from the near domain onto the far domain eliminates scan time and prevents eye accommodation when switching between the near and far domains, but these benefits may be offset by the cost of increasing the amount of clutter in the forward field of view. For HMDs, the issue of frame of reference involves a comparison of world-referenced displays, in which information is displayed so that it is slaved to the momentary orientation of the head, with screen- referenced, such that the location of objects on the display is based on a pre- determined set of x- and y-coordinates, independent of head movement. Additionally, HMDs can be configured so that information is displayed to monoscopically or stereoscopically to one eye or two. In the current experiment, sixteen subjects (8 civilian, 8 military) viewed static two-dimensional renderings of three-dimensional images depicting hilly terrain, in which targets consisting of tanks, soldiers, land mines, and nuclear devices were hidden.