Kyriaki Christaki, Dimitrios Tsiakmakis, Ivanka Babic, Guillaume Inglese, Konstantinos Konstantoudakis, Gabriele Giunta, et al. (2022). Augmented Reality Points of Interest for Improved First Responder Situational Awareness. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 755–770). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Situational awareness is a vital component of any disaster response mission, both in terms of first responder (FR) safety and efficiency. Points of interest (POI) can pertain to hazards known beforehand, risks discovered during the course of a mission, victims, entry and exit routes, important equipment, and more. Although communications and technical means can expand an individual FR’s situational awareness, they depend on clarity and can increase cognitive load, as this expanded volume of information must be held in each FR’s memory. Augmented reality (AR) can visualize POIs in context with the environment in a clear and intuitive way and reduce cognitive load as the don’t rely on a user’s memory. This paper presents an AR solution for FR team situational awareness, comprising four interconnected and collaborating situational awareness tools sharing a common pool of virtual POIs, alongside a range of different functionalities particular to each.
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Dimitrios Sainidis, Dimitrios Tsiakmakis, Konstantinos Konstantoudakis, Georgios Albanis, Anastasios Dimou, & Petros Daras. (2021). Single-Handed Gesture UAV Control and Video Feed AR Visualization for First Responders. In Anouck Adrot, Rob Grace, Kathleen Moore, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2021 Conference Proceedings – 18th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 835–848). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly widespread in recent years, with numerous applications spanning multiple sectors. UAVs can be of particular benefit to first responders, assisting in both hazard detection and search-and-rescue operations, increasing their situational awareness without endangering human personnel; However, conventional UAV control requires both hands on a remote controller and many hours of training to control efficiently. Additionally, viewing the UAV video-feed on conventional devices (e.g. smartphones) require first responders to glance downwards to look at the screen, increasing the risk of accident. To this end, this work presents a unified system, incorporating single-hand gesture control for UAVs and an augmented reality (AR) visualization of their video feed, while also allowing for backup remote UAV control from any device and multiple-recipient video streaming. A modular architecture allows the upgrade or replacement of individual modules without affecting the whole. The presented system has been tested in the lab, and in field trials by first responders.
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