Effects of streaming video quality of service on spatial comprehension in a reconnaissance task
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Authors
Darken, Rudolph P.
Kempster, Kurt
Peterson, Barry
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2001
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Abstract
It has been proposed that if we could configure individual personnel with micro-video cameras and wireless
communications such that they could transmit a video stream of what they were seeing to a remote observer, this
would be an enormous improvement in reconnaissance and battlefield command and control. We looked ahead,
based on current video and wireless communications technologies and trends to what we can expect to have
available in terms of streaming video quality of service (QOS) and we used those predictions to conduct an
experiment to determine if this assertion of improvement is true. Participants viewed a digital video with a data rate
associated with a given transmission technology. They were asked to maintain their orientation by tracking the
position of the camera on a paper floor plan diagram. They were also asked to identify a number of objects and place
them in the correct room on the floor plan. The results show that participants found all conditions except the live
walkthrough control condition to be extremely difficult with poor performance on both the spatial orientation task
and the object identification task. Bandwidth does affect error as increased data rate improves performance. Rapid
head rotations seem to be the largest contributor to disorientation, especially with low data rate video. Our results
suggest that simply supplying video feedback to a remote observer may be useless at best or possibly damaging at
worst. What is needed is not necessarily more bandwidth, but better interfaces and tools to help observers to remain
oriented such that they can extract what is needed from the video stream.
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Darken, R., Kempster, K., & Peterson, B. (2001). “Effects of Streaming Video Quality of Service on Spatial
Comprehension in a Reconnaissance Task.” Proceedings of I/ITSEC 2001, Orlando, FL.
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.