Perspective on Wearable Systems for Human Underwater Perceptual Enhancement

Underwater areas have harsh environments with poor light, limited visibility, and high levels of noise. Humans have a weak perception of position, surroundings, and exterior information when staying underwater, which makes it difficult for humans to carry out complex underwater tasks, such as rescue, observation, and construction. Wearable devices have shown good results in enhancing human sensory function on land, thus they could potentially play a role in enhancing human underwater perception ability. This perspective aims to analyze the state-of-the-art of underwater wearable systems for human perception enhancement. This work discusses the core technology and challenges of human underwater perceptual enhancement, including wearable underwater navigation, underwater environment reconstruction, and underwater sensorial information delivery. Future research could focus on designing waterproof flexible human-machine interfaces for sensing and feedback, exploiting advanced sensors and fusion algorithms for wearable underwater positioning, and studying multimodal information interaction strategies of wearable systems.