Efficient social distance maintenance with augmented reality

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of social distancing to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. However, enforcing social distancing in public spaces with traditional methods, such as hiring workers or using robots to remind people, can be unwelcome. In this paper, we propose a new technique to help maintain social distancing using augmented reality. We hypothesize that visualizing respiratory droplets with an augmented-reality interface can help individuals avoid getting too close to others. To test this hypothesis, we developed an augmented reality prototype that combines real-time head pose tracking with particle systems to align special effects to the subjects in the real world. We conducted user studies to evaluate the effectiveness of our method in daily communication scenes. Experimental results validated the efficiency of the proposed method and showed the potential of augmented reality for future epidemiological protection.