A third eye to augment environment perception

Extending the human field of view could enhance our ability to perceive our surroundings thereby improving user safety and enabling us to perform complex manipulation tasks in industrial assembly processes. We investigated the augmentation of environment perception through a study that systematically measured the performance and perception arising from the use of a third eye placed on the back of the user’s head in virtual reality. 28 participants were asked to conduct two goal-oriented tasks: One requiring the identification of targets that discretely appeared in a set of predefined locations; the other the catching of a continuously moving target. The results show that participants were able to incorporate the additional visual information in real time resulting in changes of their motion behaviour. These changes led to localised improvements in task performance for the discrete target task and more efficient motion for both tasks. Participants also showed a strong preference for performing the tasks with the third eye and perceived no accompanying increase in cognitive load.