Researchers at the University of Tokyo have built an augmented reality (AR) interface that keeps information simplified until the user focuses on it.

The interface has an eye-tracking system that allows interaction to be driven entirely by gaze direction. It displays objects that demand attention in the user’s peripheral vision as simple icons that can be processed even by the limited visual acuity of human peripheral vision.

If a user wants more information, for example, to read an email represented in the peripheral vision by an icon, simply concentrating on the object brings up a higher-resolution instance of it with as much attached information as necessary.

The researchers say that the AR interface keeps information in peripheral vision in a simplified form that can be more easily processed by the brain as background tasks that only come to the foreground when directed.

Ref.: Yoshio Ishiguro and Jun Rekimoto, Peripheral vision annotation: noninterference information presentation method for mobile augmented reality, Proceedings of the 2nd Augmented Human International Conference, ACM Digital Library 2011