Heads Up!: Towards In Situ Photogrammetry Annotations and Augmented Reality Visualizations for Guided Backcountry Skiing

Backcountry skiing is an activity where a group of skiers navigates challenging environmental conditions to ski outside of managed areas. This activity requires careful monitoring and effective communication around the current weather and terrain conditions to ensure skier safety. We aim to support and facilitate this communication by providing backcountry guides with a set of in situ spatial annotation tools to communicate hazards and appropriate speeds to the ski recreationalists. A guide can use a commercial camera drone to create a photogrammetry-based map of a mountainside, then a tablet application to annotate it with hazards, slow-down zones, and safe zones. These annotations are communicated to the skiers via visual overlays in augmented reality heads-up displays. We present a prototype consisting of a web application and a virtual reality display that mirrors the guide’s and skier’s perspectives, enabling participatory interaction design studies in a safe environment.