Toward a practical wall see-through system for drivers: How simple can it be?

This study specifically examines wall see-through visualization for drivers at blind corners to prevent crossing collisions. We believe that realizing the desired effect with the simplest visualization is a key to building practical systems, although previous studies mainly targeted rich visualization as if the wall were actually transparent. We compared several visualization levels using qualitative and quantitative measures based on performance of the driver´s collision estimation and the meaning assignment to visual stimuli. The results revealed that displaying only the direction of the obscured vehicle by a small circle is sufficient for collision estimation, although it was perceived as less informative. We also obtained a preliminary result indicating that the meaning assignment performance is significantly lower in a peripheral region of the driver´s view. Although both collision estimation and meaning assignment performance are necessary for building an effective system, these results clarify that future studies must specifically examine the meaning assignment performance of the stimuli.