The intelligence of environments 169
provide interactive opportunities towards them. Alternatively, an AR system
might aim at a more general parallelism between what it signals and real or fictitious objects and activities, or types thereof, such as in AR-based gaming. I will
briefly present two types of concrete AR applications, so as to further explicate
these relations.
The first example is driver focus technologies, that is advanced driver assistance systems. In the wake of other driver assistance technologies, for whom a
‘trickle-through’ effect from the upmarket to the middle segment of the automobile market is already observable, and where a process of making them mandatory by law has commenced (LFE-b-2015, citing the example of eCall), driver
focus systems stand a chance of becoming marketable in the near future.
11
The
basic function of a driver focus system is to autonomously monitor both the current traffic situation around the car and to detect potentially hazardous situations
and to observe the driver’s degree and direction of attention, and to match these
variables against each other and in real time. Tracking the driver’s direction of
attention is accomplished by camera-based detection of the viewing direction and
the current geometry of the driver’s face. If and when a critical situation emerges
outside his or her current perceptual focus, or if there is evidence that he or she is
completely distracted from traffic events in a critical moment, the Driver Focus
System sends an optical signal through an LED strip that completely encircles
the vehicle’s interior. It might also send an additional acoustic signal. The optical
signal comprises intuitively colour-coded moving light bands that converge in the
direction of the relevant situation registered by the system (e.g. red for imminent
danger of collision, violet for close approach to an obstacle when manoeuvring).
Unlike conventional proximity sensors, a situation-specific warning is issued only
if and when the system actually registers a mismatch between the situation and
the driver’s attention.
Driver focus technologies of the kind just described thus involve a tracking of,
and reaction to, the driver’s behaviours and include this information into what
they display to him or her. This is information that would be fairly difficult for the
driver to track himself or herself, and it is practically impossible for him or her
to do so from a third-person perspective. In fact, such information is displayed to
the driver especially in situations where his or her self-awareness is registered as
being below par. Nonetheless, a driver focus system provides real-time information about the environment, including the driver that, although partly not present
and partly even inaccessible to him or her by direct perception, has all the characteristics of natural information for perception. Convergence of this information
with what the driver could hypothetically observe himself or herself (or what an
attentive passenger could actually observe) is paramount to the proper functioning of a driver focus system. The domain of artificially created signals and the
domains of natural information have to map onto a shared (identical or overlapping) set of concrete world affairs in a shared environment, and it will have to
do so along corresponding regularities of informational mapping. After all, the
purpose of the Driver Focus System is to help the driver to track relevant conditions in the environment.
provide interactive opportunities towards them. Alternatively, an AR system
might aim at a more general parallelism between what it signals and real or fictitious objects and activities, or types thereof, such as in AR-based gaming. I will
briefly present two types of concrete AR applications, so as to further explicate
these relations.
The first example is driver focus technologies, that is advanced driver assistance systems. In the wake of other driver assistance technologies, for whom a
‘trickle-through’ effect from the upmarket to the middle segment of the automobile market is already observable, and where a process of making them mandatory by law has commenced (LFE-b-2015, citing the example of eCall), driver
focus systems stand a chance of becoming marketable in the near future.
11
The
basic function of a driver focus system is to autonomously monitor both the current traffic situation around the car and to detect potentially hazardous situations
and to observe the driver’s degree and direction of attention, and to match these
variables against each other and in real time. Tracking the driver’s direction of
attention is accomplished by camera-based detection of the viewing direction and
the current geometry of the driver’s face. If and when a critical situation emerges
outside his or her current perceptual focus, or if there is evidence that he or she is
completely distracted from traffic events in a critical moment, the Driver Focus
System sends an optical signal through an LED strip that completely encircles
the vehicle’s interior. It might also send an additional acoustic signal. The optical
signal comprises intuitively colour-coded moving light bands that converge in the
direction of the relevant situation registered by the system (e.g. red for imminent
danger of collision, violet for close approach to an obstacle when manoeuvring).
Unlike conventional proximity sensors, a situation-specific warning is issued only
if and when the system actually registers a mismatch between the situation and
the driver’s attention.
Driver focus technologies of the kind just described thus involve a tracking of,
and reaction to, the driver’s behaviours and include this information into what
they display to him or her. This is information that would be fairly difficult for the
driver to track himself or herself, and it is practically impossible for him or her
to do so from a third-person perspective. In fact, such information is displayed to
the driver especially in situations where his or her self-awareness is registered as
being below par. Nonetheless, a driver focus system provides real-time information about the environment, including the driver that, although partly not present
and partly even inaccessible to him or her by direct perception, has all the characteristics of natural information for perception. Convergence of this information
with what the driver could hypothetically observe himself or herself (or what an
attentive passenger could actually observe) is paramount to the proper functioning of a driver focus system. The domain of artificially created signals and the
domains of natural information have to map onto a shared (identical or overlapping) set of concrete world affairs in a shared environment, and it will have to
do so along corresponding regularities of informational mapping. After all, the
purpose of the Driver Focus System is to help the driver to track relevant conditions in the environment.