Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 May 18:10:216.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00216. eCollection 2016.

Into the Wild: Neuroergonomic Differentiation of Hand-Held and Augmented Reality Wearable Displays during Outdoor Navigation with Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Ryan McKendrick  1 , Raja Parasuraman  1 , Rabia Murtza  1 , Alice Formwalt  1 , Wendy Baccus  1 , Martin Paczynski  1 , Hasan Ayaz  2
Affiliations

Into the Wild: Neuroergonomic Differentiation of Hand-Held and Augmented Reality Wearable Displays during Outdoor Navigation with Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Ryan McKendrick et al. Front Hum Neurosci. .

Abstract

Highly mobile computing devices promise to improve quality of life, productivity, and performance. Increased situation awareness and reduced mental workload are two potential means by which this can be accomplished. However, it is difficult to measure these concepts in the "wild". We employed ultra-portable battery operated and wireless functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to non-invasively measure hemodynamic changes in the brain's Prefrontal cortex (PFC). Measurements were taken during navigation of a college campus with either a hand-held display, or an Augmented reality wearable display (ARWD). Hemodynamic measures were also paired with secondary tasks of visual perception and auditory working memory to provide behavioral assessment of situation awareness and mental workload. Navigating with an augmented reality wearable display produced the least workload during the auditory working memory task, and a trend for improved situation awareness in our measures of prefrontal hemodynamics. The hemodynamics associated with errors were also different between the two devices. Errors with an augmented reality wearable display were associated with increased prefrontal activity and the opposite was observed for the hand-held display. This suggests that the cognitive mechanisms underlying errors between the two devices differ. These findings show fNIRS is a valuable tool for assessing new technology in ecologically valid settings and that ARWDs offer benefits with regards to mental workload while navigating, and potentially superior situation awareness with improved display design.

Keywords: fNIRS; head-mounted display; mental workload; neuroergonomics; situation awareness; spatial navigation; working memory.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Map depicting the four routes followed by participants. Exact routes depicted in red, white arrows indicate walking direction. Image © 2015 DigitalGlobe.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Participant in augmented reality wearable displays (ARWD) group wearing battery operated wireless functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) sensor over the forehead, Google Glass and Bluetooth headphones (left) wireless fNIRS sensor pads (right, top) and placement sketch (right, bottom) with four optodes identified between light source and detectors.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percentage of correct responses during an auditory 1-back while navigating with an ARWD or a HHD. *p < 0.05.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Relative concentrations of oxygenated hemoglobin in RLPFC for correct and incorrect blocks of an auditory 1-back while navigating with an ARWD (Google Glass) and HHD (Smartphone). *p < 0.05.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Relative concentrations of deoxygenated hemoglobin in RLPFC for correct and incorrect blocks of an auditory 1-back while navigating with an ARWD (Google Glass) and HHD (Smartphone). **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Percentage of correct responses during a scenery probe task while navigating with ARWD or a HHD.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Relative oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin at bilateral optodes for incorrect trials of the scenery probe task while navigating with an ARWD (Google Glass) and HHD (Smartphone). **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abibullaev B., An J. (2012). Classification of frontal cortex haemodynamic responses during cognitive tasks using wavelet transforms and machine learning algorithms. Med. Eng. Phys. 34, 1394–1410. 10.1016/j.medengphy.2012.01.002 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Asplund C. L., Todd J. J., Snyder A. P., Marois R. (2010). A central role for the lateral prefrontal cortex in goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention. Nat. Neurosci. 13, 507–512. 10.1038/nn.2509 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ayaz H., Çakır M. P., Izzetoğlu K., Curtin A., Shewokis P. A., Bunce S. C., et al. (2012a). Monitoring expertise development during simulated UAV piloting tasks using optical brain imaging. IEEE Aerospace Conference 2012, 1–11. 10.1109/aero.2012.6187350 - DOI
    1. Ayaz H., Shewokis P. A., Bunce S., Izzetoglu K., Willems B., Onaral B. (2012b). Optical brain monitoring for operator training and mental workload assessment.Neuroimage 59, 36–47. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.06.023 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ayaz H., Izzetoglu M., Shewokis P. A., Onaral B. (2010). Sliding-window motion artifact rejection for functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Conf. Proc. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc. 2010, 6567–6570. 10.1109/iembs.2010.5627113 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources