Enhancing the mirror image

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Heiko Hecht
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464850937

We have not evolved to base our actions on mirror images. Our intuitions about mirror objects are often erroneous. However, in many situations we nonetheless rely critically on mirror images. For instance, when driving, the rear-view mirror plays an important role in time-critical actions. We have become accustomed to convex mirrors in cars, but modern camera-monitor systems are about to replace mirrors and pose new challenges. Little is known about the advantages and potential disruptions of perception when using such systems. On the one hand, camera-monitor systems can help us overcome errors associated with mirror use, provided they can be optimized for the human user. On the other hand, if they are not user-optimized, they could make perception-based actions even harder or outright dangerous. It is our goal to investigate the conditions that facilitate use and minimize human error when acting upon the visual information provided by camera-monitor systems. One cause for potential danger is that the eye point in these systems differs from the eye-point to which we have become accustomed when driving with classical mirrors. The perspective change and the eye-point dissociation may distort the perceived ego-position with respect to the outside world. We propose a number of experiments to investigate the absolute and relative placements of camera and monitor with regard to their effects on eye-movement behavior, time-to-contact estimation, lane change decisions, and hazard detection. We also propose to explore different methods to enhance the rear-view image in ways that are not possible with traditional mirrors. In the monitor, the image can be processed to enhance relevant objects or to remove irrelevant clutter. The proposed research is designed to provide theoretical insights into the processing of visual information with unusual vantage points. And it is designed to assess different methods of mirror image enhancement. From these insights, we will derive practical recommendations for the placement of camera and monitor as well as image-processing. In order to conduct the proposed experiments in our laboratory, we would need a mobile eye-tracker and a simple custom-made driving-simulator.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants