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ATHENE research on perception manipulation in augmented reality honored at CHI 2025
ATHENE researchers presented their innovative research on “SwitchAR” at the renowned CHI Conference 2025 in Yokohama and received the Jury Honorable Mention Award. The technology, developed as part of the ATHENE project “XR-Guard - A Security Mechanism to Detect and Mitigate Perceptual Manipulations in Extended Reality” under the coordination of Prof. Jan Gugenheimer, enables the application of perceptual manipulations in augmented reality (AR) environments for the first time.
The SwitchAR system presented uses well-known psychological phenomena such as change blindness, i.e. the human inability to notice changes in the visual environment, and inattentional blindness, understood as overlooking objects while focusing attention on other content. These mechanisms allow users to switch imperceptibly between the real camera view and a virtual 3D reconstruction of the environment while still believing they are in an AR environment. Established virtual reality techniques such as the targeted redirection of walking movements can thus be used in AR contexts without users noticing the switch between modes.
Conference participants were able to experience the technology for themselves in a specially developed, transportable pavilion and experience the seamless transition between AR and VR modes.
This fundamental research work opens up new possibilities for the development of safety-critical mixed reality applications and contributes to the further development of cybersecurity research in the field of extended reality - the spectrum of technologies between physical and fully virtual environments.
More about the award can be found on the Website of CHI 2025.
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