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.

翻译：交通本身具有危险性，每年约造成119万人死亡。汽车中介现实（AMR）可通过在关键物体上叠加关键信息（如轮廓、图标、文本）以提升认知度、改变物体外观以简化交通状况、以及弱化其外观以减少干扰，从而提升驾驶安全性。然而，由于技术挑战，现实世界中的AMR评估仍然有限。为填补仿真与现实之间的差距，我们提出了MIRAGE——一种能在真实车辆中实现实时AMR的开源工具。MIRAGE采用最先进的计算模型进行物体检测与分割、深度估计和图像修复，实现了涵盖增强现实、弱化现实和修改现实三大AMR谱系的15种特效。在针对MIRAGE开展的道路专家用户研究（N=9）中，参与者在肯定AMR体验价值的同时，指出了技术局限性并明确了AMR的应用场景。我们结合已有研究对这些结果进行了讨论，并阐述了其对AMR伦理与交互设计的启示。