Heat on Sight - Display Thermal Radiation in the Peripheral Field of View

Firefighters risk their lives for saving people in danger. To protect them during their risky duties, it is necessary to find new ways, means and tools to increase their personal safety. One promising approach is the use of a display integrated into a firefighter's helmet using the peripheral vision to provide important information. Subsequently, a demonstrator of a peripheral display in a firefighter helmet is presented in this paper. In this particular application, measurement data from an infrared sensor array is superimposed on the peripheral field of vision of a firefighter as a color-coded signal. The display consists of RGB LEDs that are controlled via computer interface. In order to address the needs of firefighters as well, a User-Centred Design study was conducted. The authors could show, that by applying a Kano analysis, it is possible to extract the user centred importance of different aspects. The most crucial features can be used for the further development of the functional model to the first prototype.