Arts: augmented reality tactical sandbox for improved situational awareness in a multi-user scenario

Abstract The Augmented Reality Tactical Sandbox is an augmented reality application that provides real-time immersive analytics of mission-critical information over a virtual map using a head-mounted display. Our application implements a service to enhance teamwork, remote collaboration, and situational awareness. Unlike previous studies, we focus on both the single-user experience and the multi-user experience, and the differences between the two, since the research is especially lacking when considering situational awareness of multiple users (distributed situational awareness). The multi-user environment allows local and remote users to collaborate in real-time to accomplish objectives involving metaverse assets displayed on the map. We conducted a user experiment with 28 participants comparing the performance and situational awareness of a single user and a team using an augmented reality map. We observed a carryover effect when going from a single user to a team and vice versa. There was no significant difference in situational awareness between the tasks, but overall, single-user situational awareness was better than it was in the multi-user experience. We also found that men performed significantly faster than women in the single-user task. The application illustrates how the concept of situational awareness can be extended to the command and control domain.