arXiv subjects

Julian Britten

Publications and source records attributed to Julian Britten.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Renaissance of Repair: A Timely Opportunity for Fabrication Research

Through the rise of the right-to-repair movement, along with supporting legislation, we are currently witnessing an attitude shift in favor of repairing. This opens up various opportunities for personal fabrication research. Although the field has shifted more towards sustainable practices, repair is rarely the main focus. In this paper, we want to make the case for repair-centered fabrication research as a timely, relevant, impactful, and therefore meaningful topic. We describe potential avenues researchers could pursue by defining repair as a five-step process, including issue identification, exploring solutions, acquiring materials, performing the repair, and testing, and discuss challenges and opportunities for each step.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

MIRAGE: Enabling Real-Time Automotive Mediated Reality

Traffic is inherently dangerous, with around 1.19 million fatalities annually. Automotive Mediated Reality (AMR) can enhance driving safety by overlaying critical information (e.g., outlines, icons, text) on key objects to improve awareness, altering objects' appearance to simplify traffic situations, and diminishing their appearance to minimize distractions. However, real-world AMR evaluation remains limited due to technical challenges. To fill this sim-to-real gap, we present MIRAGE, an open-source tool that enables real-time AMR in real vehicles. MIRAGE implements 15 effects across the AMR spectrum of augmented, diminished, and modified reality using state-of-the-art computational models for object detection and segmentation, depth estimation, and inpainting. In an on-road expert user study (N=9) of MIRAGE, participants enjoyed the AMR experience while pointing out technical limitations and identifying use cases for AMR. We discuss these results in relation to prior work and outline implications for AMR ethics and interaction design.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

PlantPal: Leveraging Precision Agriculture Robots to Facilitate Remote Engagement in Urban Gardening

Urban gardening is widely recognized for its numerous health and environmental benefits. However, the lack of suitable garden spaces, demanding daily schedules and limited gardening expertise present major roadblocks for citizens looking to engage in urban gardening. While prior research has explored smart home solutions to support urban gardeners, these approaches currently do not fully address these practical barriers. In this paper, we present PlantPal, a system that enables the cultivation of garden spaces irrespective of one's location, expertise level, or time constraints. PlantPal enables the shared operation of a precision agriculture robot (PAR) that is equipped with garden tools and a multi-camera system. Insights from a 3-week deployment (N=18) indicate that PlantPal facilitated the integration of gardening tasks into daily routines, fostered a sense of connection with one's field, and provided an engaging experience despite the remote setting. We contribute design considerations for future robot-assisted urban gardening concepts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

AutoVis: Enabling Mixed-Immersive Analysis of Automotive User Interface Interaction Studies

Automotive user interface (AUI) evaluation becomes increasingly complex due to novel interaction modalities, driving automation, heterogeneous data, and dynamic environmental contexts. Immersive analytics may enable efficient explorations of the resulting multilayered interplay between humans, vehicles, and the environment. However, no such tool exists for the automotive domain. With AutoVis, we address this gap by combining a non-immersive desktop with a virtual reality view enabling mixed-immersive analysis of AUIs. We identify design requirements based on an analysis of AUI research and domain expert interviews (N=5). AutoVis supports analyzing passenger behavior, physiology, spatial interaction, and events in a replicated study environment using avatars, trajectories, and heatmaps. We apply context portals and driving-path events as automotive-specific visualizations. To validate AutoVis against real-world analysis tasks, we implemented a prototype, conducted heuristic walkthroughs using authentic data from a case study and public datasets, and leveraged a real vehicle in the analysis process.

cs.HC↗