Implementing a Customizable Air Taxi Simulator with a Video-See-Through Head-Mounted Display - A Comparison of Different Mixed Reality Approaches

Abstract

Currently, the research on urban air mobility and particularly on air taxi concepts experiences a major boom, not only in the aviation industry. One goal of DLR's project HorizonUAM is to assess the passenger acceptance during this new way to travel. Therefore, we developed a mixed reality air taxi simulator that exploits the capabilities of a video-see-through head-mounted display. In this paper, we present and evaluate four different mixed reality setups that differ in the amount of real and virtual content present inside the air taxi cabin. In a study with twelve participants we assessed the overall simulator as well as the usability of the four setups with respect to the level of immersion and ease of interaction. Our findings reveal that the participants preferred a fully virtual experience of an air taxi flight. From our tasks on human-machine interaction we also found the text on a virtual user interface to be easier readable than from a real tablet computer via the see-through cameras of the HMD. The ratings of the tasks that required input from the user, however, show that the vast majority of participants favor the interaction with the real tablet. Taking the results into consideration, we will further improve the air taxi simulator for an extensive human factors study on passenger acceptance.