Handheld augmented reality for distributed collaborative crime scene investigation

Recent research showed that augmented reality (AR) technology is a promising approach to support distributed teams in crime scene investigation. This paper reports on the development and evaluation of a handheld AR system to support team situational awareness and collaboration among co-located and remote forensic investigators. The AR system runs on a smartphone strapped to the wrists of the local investigators and on a laptop for the remote investigator. The AR system has been evaluated with three experienced forensic investigators and was carried out in two rounds: (1) with one local and one remote investigator and (2) with two local and one remote investigator. The evaluation focused on the usability of the AR system and its effect on situational awareness as well as collaboration quality. Compared to earlier experiments using head-mounted devices (HMDs), the findings suggest that the handheld AR system addresses limitations of current HMD based AR system, but the necessary division of attention between smartphone AR system and real environment impacts the situational awareness.