ARTennis
- AR/VR, Accessibility
project description
Individuals with low vision (LV) can experience vision-related challenges when participating in sports, especially those with fast-moving objects. We introduce ARTennis, a prototype for wearable augmented reality (AR) that utilizes real-time computer vision (CV) to enhance the visual saliency of tennis balls. As initial design, a red dot is placed over the tennis ball and four green arrows point at the ball, forming a crosshair. As AR and CV technologies continue to improve, we expect head-worn AR to broaden the inclusivity of sports, such as tennis and basketball.
problem statement
Ball-based sports such as tennis are not accessible to low vision (LV) people.
solution
To empower LV individuals to play tennis, we designed an application for wearable augmented reality (AR) that uses real-time computer vision to enhance the visual saliency of a moving tennis ball.
my process
- train a custom computer vision model
- design visual augmentations based on co-design with a LV researcher
- conduct user study
- create figures for the paper
- Date:June 2023 - August 2023
- Role:Research Assistant
- Tools:Figma
- Team:ARTennis
Figures
- The left figure is a first-person point of view of a person playing tennis wearing the VR headset without the visual augmentation. The right figure is also a first-person point of view, but with the visual augmentation, which is the red dot over the tennis ball surrounded by green arrows, that follows the ball in real-time as the ball is hit back and forth.
- An overview of ARTennis and its implementation process
impact
Our participant believes that our prototype will make everyday sports more accessible.
reflection
After speaking to someone who has low-vision, I began to think deeper about accessible design. I was also introduced to new technologies like Yolov8 and how to train a VR model. I hope to continue building for low vision people in the future. Thank you for reading! 🎾