User awareness of tracking uncertainties in AR navigation scenarios

Current Augmented Reality navigation applications for pedestrians usually do not visualize tracking errors. However, tracking uncertainties can accumulate so that the user is presented with a distorted impression of navigation accuracy. To increase the awareness of users about potential imperfections of the tracking at a given time, we alter the visualization of the navigation system. We developed four visualization and error visualization concepts and used a controlled Mixed Reality environment to conduct a pilot study. We found that, while error visualization has the potential to improve AR navigation systems, it is difficult to find suitable visualizations, which are correctly understood among the users.