RESOLVING PERCEPTUAL CHALLENGES OF VISUALIZING UNDERGROUND UTILITIES IN MIXED REALITY

Abstract. Augmented reality (AR) is intensely explored due to its wide range of potential applications, from education and engineering to medicine and defense. Nevertheless, utilizing AR for visualizing underground utilities still faces a number of challenges, including the unavailability of reliable, readily accessible digital information about underground utilities, localization of AR devices in a GNSS-deprived environment, and visual perceptual challenges. This paper discusses the utilization of Mixed reality (MR) to address the visual perceptual challenges, which can provide a realistic visualization and convenient user experience compared to AR. Six MR visualization prototypes have been developed, namely, "General view", "General + Range view", "General + Elevator view", "X-Ray box view", "X-Ray box + Depthslider view", and "X-Ray + box + Clipping view", and they are deployed to Microsoft HoloLens 2 for testing purposes. These new MR visualization methods can potentially resolve AR's visual perceptual challenges for visualizing underground utilities.