Mobile augmented reality techniques for emergency response

Abstract

In an emergency situation, each response agent must act quickly and accurately. The support of a mobile device that can provide an appropriate insight of the surroundings and that allows users to exchange information with the other members of the emergency teams, can prevent harm and even save many lives. This paper presents a mobile application that integrates a georeferenced system with augmented reality techniques, in order to serve the needs of the operatives in emergency situations. The work intends to introduce solutions which optimize the performance with which the user takes advantage of the mobile application, such as the organization of the data flow that is displayed and the augmentation of the surrounding area. User studies were conducted with members of the National Navy. The results were positive although there are still some aspects that should be improved. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Mixed / augmented reality.

RescueAR: Augmented Reality Supported Collaboration for UAV Driven Emergency Response Systems

“…FirstResponse-AR also leverages ARKit's [1] world tracking feature to augment the POI symbol in the first responders' view based on geolocations of the POI and the first responders' device. The FirstResponse-AR interface extends Campos et al, THEMIS-AR [17] design for use in a multi-UAV domain. While THEMIS-AR requires humans to manually provide the geolocation of the POI in the form of GPS coordinates, our solution lifts this limitation by automatically computing the geolocations of POIs based on annotations in the video stream.…”

“…The THEMIS-AR [44] is an AR mobile application designed to improve emergency responders' scene perception by overlaying context-relevant information, such as distance, time, and position of POIs on their scene perception via a head-mounted display. Further, Campos et al, [17] extended THEMIS-AR to study AR user interfaces and provide guidelines for designing AR applications for emergency response. However, the scene information in THEMIS-AR is geo-referenced manually, and the AR application overlays that same information on the firstperson views of onsite first-responders, such as the number of casualties, distance to the nearest hospital, or fire location.…”

“…The main contributions of this paper are: (i) the design and implementation of the RescueAR component: Flying-AR , as an interface for remote rescue team members to create, share, and visualize AR content during the UAV-driven emergency response mission, (ii) a second interface for On-Scene Response teams: FirstResponse-AR , which builds upon the design of existing AR interface [17] and adapts them for use in a UAV-driven emergency response system, (iii) feedback from a focus group study that assesses the differences between verbal and visual modes of communicating a scene in a rapidly changing environment, and (iv) recommendations for the design of frameworks for the UAV-driven emergency response system emphasizing visual communication. We conducted multiple studies to learn the feasibility, usability, and end-users' (police officers) perspective of our system.…”

Exploring the Design Space of Optical See-through AR Head-Mounted Displays to Support First Responders in the Field

“…Nunes et al [67] presented THEMIS-AR, a mobile AR application that augmented FRs' scene perception by overlaying context information and guidance (e.g., symbols, pictures, text) to the video stream captured through a smartphone camera. Moreover, Campos et al [22] created an AR mobile application to assist FRs in emergencies by displaying points of interests and a mini-map. However, such handheld systems occupy users' hands and require them to constantly switch focus between the screen and the physical environment [28].…”

Towards Domain-Specific Modelling Environments Based on Augmented Reality

“…The advances in mobile devices and the availability of hardware for head-mounted displays (like HoloLens) have prompted the proposal of applications that use AR. Examples include emergency situations [24] (visualising geolocated data reported during an emergency), quality assurance in industrial settings [25] (to display extra information over vehicle components), to help exploring exhibitions [26] (by displaying an AR map towards different parts of the exhibition), or for factory maintenance (to monitor dynamic machine parameters [17], or to configure IoT devices [27]). These applications were built ad-hoc using manual programming.…”