Trust-Enabling Augmented-reality Support for information Environments (TEASE)

Augmented reality offers an opportunity to layer data on top of physical imagery. Such realities provide users of cyberspace with an ability to access locality-based information sources, applications, service providers, and even people via various forms of mash-up. This can enhance access to internet information sources, making information-pull easier and more intuitive to use, particularly when relevance to the geographical area and related events is important. We anticipate key benefits to exist for decision support in disaster-response situations and social-networking interactions, as well as a host of other business and social location-based services. However, the amount of information available via the internet could simply serve to confuse. Which sources should people pay most attention to? Which should they trust? If sources are accidentally or maliciously incorrect, the consequences can be serious. Therefore, there is an acute need to provide information-quality measures to users of information sources, to help them make decisions regarding the trustworthiness of information. The University of Warwick will specifically address the delivery of information-provenance and integrity support for use in location-based information mash-ups (for both smartphone and personal-computer devices) through the design of an augmented-reality overlay which presents information-provenance and communication-integrity information in a manner optimised for human cognition, in order to build trust in the information they provide.

Participating in the TEASE project will allow us to deepen our relationship with THALES and HW Communications, providing a means to prototype the results of our research, helping us to achieve impact and to learn from the feedback arising as the prototype decision-support tools are tested. The partners will gain from the Warwick team's interdisciplinary approach to technology development which should offer them opportunities to enhance other products within their portfolios to optimise them for building trust within human users. Warwick will gain additional insight into the practical and contextual issues which must be considered when integrating theory into such technologies, which will impact all of our research that is technology focused. We expect to generate new IP in the area of decision-support tools, particularly in the extension of the logic being developed by our doctoral student to underpin provision of not only information-provenance but also integrity guidance, and in how to design augmented-reality overlays optimised for building human trust in the information displayed. This will offer the opportunity to enhance decision making, improving decisions and speed of response. When used in corporate environments we envisage our research offering the opportunity to improve business-critical decisions for remote locations, such as planning local logistics or physical-asset security, based on an ability to source information from local sources of varying pedigree with clear guidance on trustworthiness and potential reliability of the data they provide. In emergency-response situations requiring locality-based real-time information sources in order to make command-and-control decisions this should result in higher-quality emergency-response strategies, so improving the prospects for victims and organisations affected. The TEASE project will provide an ideal environment within which to explore possible routes to market for this IP with THALES and HW Communications, particularly by consideration of both trusted-service and licensing-based models. The knowledge of how to optimise interfaces for building trust in advice being offered will enable the designers of security technologies more generally to understand the principles of optimisation for human cognition. It will help the providers of decision-support tools, social-networking applications and other location-based services based upon data fusion (such as assisted living and dynamic integrated transport management scenarios) to offer entirely new functionality incorporating trustworthiness factors relating to the provenance of the information being used. This will directly benefit their customers by helping them reach better-informed decisions and ultimately help them by increasing the attractiveness of their product and their competitiveness within the market place.