Toward Governing Perception in Safety-Critical Mediated Reality on the Move
This paper addresses the critical need for user control and transparency in Mediated Reality systems for safety-critical mobile applications, impacting users who rely on these systems for situation awareness and trust calibration.
This paper argues for the necessity of governable Mediated Reality (MR) in safety-critical on-the-move contexts like automated driving, where AR systems are evolving from additive overlays to techniques that suppress, transform, or substitute scene elements. The authors contend that users require mechanisms to configure, inspect, and understand these perceptual mediations without compromising safety.
Wearable Augmented Reality (AR) is increasingly deployed in on-the-move contexts such as automated driving, cycling, and pedestrian navigation. To date, most systems rely on additive overlays that highlight hazards, intentions, or predictions without altering the scene itself. However, advances in head-mounted displays and computer vision now enable Diminished and Modified Reality techniques that suppress, transform, or substitute scene elements. These capabilities conceptually extend AR into Mediated Reality (MR), shifting the design space from "what to add" to "what is perceptually available." Because such mediation reshapes the evidential basis for situation awareness and trust calibration, it raises novel interaction challenges. This position paper argues that MR on the move must become governable, as users need mechanisms to configure, inspect, and understand mediation without compromising safety. Additionally, this position paper outlines design challenges related to governance granularity, epistemic signaling, and accountability, and frames MR on the move as a research agenda for governable perceptual mediation in dynamic, safety-critical environments.