Evaluation of Mobile Augmented Reality Application for Building Evacuation

10 pages•Published: September 26, 2019

Abstract

Building occupants must know how to properly exit a building should the need ever arise. Being aware of appropriate evacuation procedures eliminates (or reduces) the risk of injury and death occurring during an existing catastrophe. Augmented reality (AR) is increasingly being sought after as a teaching and training tool because it offers a visualization and interaction capability that captures the learner’s attention and enhances the learner’s capacity to retain what was learned. Utilizing the visualization and interaction capability that AR offers and the need for emergency evacuation training, this paper explores mobile AR application (MARA) constructed to help users evacuate a building in the event of an emergency such as a building fire, active shooter, earthquake, and similar circumstances. The MARA was built for Android-based devices using Unity and Vuforia. Its features include the use of intelligent signs (i.e. visual cues to guide users to the exits) to help users evacuate a building. Inter alia, this paper discusses the MARA’s implementation and its evaluation through a user study utilizing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the System Usability Scale (SUS) frameworks. The results demonstrate the participants’ opinions that the MARA is both usable and effective in helping users evacuate a building.

Keyphrases: android, augmented reality, building evacuation, mobile application, vuforia

In: Frederick Harris, Sergiu Dascalu, Sharad Sharma and Rui Wu (editors). Proceedings of 28th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering, vol 64, pages 109-118.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/s5ZH
	https://doi.org/10.29007/7jch

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{SEDE2019:Evaluation_Mobile_Augmented_Reality,
  author    = {James Stigall and Sharad Sharma},
  title     = {Evaluation of Mobile Augmented Reality Application for Building Evacuation},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of 28th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering},
  editor    = {Frederick Harris and Sergiu Dascalu and Sharad Sharma and Rui Wu},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {64},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/s5ZH},
  doi       = {10.29007/7jch},
  pages     = {109-118},
  year      = {2019}}

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