Abstract
A host of visual impairments affect the lives of those around us. These range from refractive errors such as short-sightedness (myopia), far-sightedness (hyperopia) and presbyopia, to colour perception variances such as colour vision deficiency (CVD) and cornea yellowing, to age-related issues that are expected to affect us all to some degree such as macular degeneration or glaucoma, and many more. In fact, visual impairments already affect the lives of some 2.2 billion people worldwide according to the World Health Organization (WHO) with at least 1 billion having issues that remain unaddressed or untreatable.
Traditional solutions to aid visual impairments involve optical lenses, generally in the form of glasses. Commonplace and widely accepted in society, glasses are used to treat low order refractive errors but are limited to those applications utilising static optical lenses with set refractive properties and limited within-optic variability.
Another means to modify perceived reality is augmented reality (AR) which has traditionally been used to introduce virtual objects to a user’s reality, or provide virtual information such as guidance, instructions, or spatially located information.
Our research looks to integrate AR with the human visual system (HVS) to provide new aids for visual impairments that utilise AR techniques to controllably modulate the environment, aiding the varied and precise needs of the visually impaired. In particular, optical see-through head-mounted displays (OSTHMDs) provide the potential to do so in a form factor similar to that of socially accepted traditional glasses. We term this concept of utilising computer-controlled optics and displays to provide visual assistance in a manner akin to glasses: Computational Glasses.
This concept has application beyond aiding impairments to providing general assistance for the HVS. Similar to sunglasses being used to assist with high luminance and glare, being able to modulate the perception of the world enables a multitude of visual aids to be produced. The utilisation of Computational Glasses would allow for precise and targeted assistance that can be adjusted as needed.
In this thesis, we present our work demonstrating the feasibility of Computational Glasses created using OSTHMD, exploring their use, and developing some of the foundational steps to their creation. After covering the current state of OSTHMD and the developments still needed to realise them as complete Computational Glasses, we created a series of prototypes to demonstrate their application to aid colour discrimination for the colourblind through several user studies. We then demonstrate augmentation of the unimpaired HVS to place focus on areas of interest with a further series of prototypes and user studies.