Stereoscopic Video See-Through Head-Mounted Displays for Laser Safety: An Empirical Evaluation at Advanced Optics Laboratories

Nowadays, high-power and multi-spectral lasers are used in many scientific experiments and industrial processes. Those laser sources can rapidly cause permanent damage to human eyes. Research and development work with those laser sources requires typically wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), such as laser safety goggles as eye protectors. Currently, laser safety goggles are based on optical spectral filters, which block spectral bands where hazardous laser radiation is emitted. Such laser safety goggles can filter up to 99% of the visible spectrum, rendering researchers working in hazardous and complex laboratory environments visually impaired. Video see-through head-mounted displays (VST-HMD) could be used as eye protectors without reducing users’ visibility of the environment since they can be constructed such that all laser and ambient light is blocked from the human eye. To date, this application domain is still largely unexplored in the MR community. To our best knowledge, there has been no comprehensive work that investigates the human factors of such an eye protection method at an advanced optics laboratory. In this work, we present the results of an empirical study where we evaluate the usability, perceived safety, advantages, and limitations of using VST-HMDs as laser safety goggles. We use a stereoscopic VST-HMD developed through a human-centered design approach at one of the most advanced optics laboratories in the world. 18 participants including 14 laser experts evaluated the current prototype. Our user evaluation and field studies confirm that the complex and hazardous working conditions at high-energy laser laboratories could be significantly improved with MR technology.