The first week of classes was occupied with a lot of things. As far as the courses go, both Machine Learning and Advanced Topics in HCI had a relatively slow start. I did not have much course work to tend to besides just understanding the flow of the classes in the upcoming semester and setting my expectations accordingly. On the other hand, the two courses( CS 1054: Intro to Programming in Java, CS/ECE 5990: System and Software Security) that I am a GTA for, did demand some time and attention. I had to schedule office hours of up to 7 hours per week and figure out grading duties with the instructor. I haven’t taken the grad course myself so I am required to complete the upcoming assignments for the students myself before I can guide them. I have set up the environment for that but have yet to solve the assignment.
For research, currently the Magic Leap 2 Remote Assist is pretty much finalized for our user study. I had to evaluate a few features of the application to understand its role in the study. Firstly, the sessions had expiration time and I had to confirm what that time is and if it can be altered. The control of expiration time might have helped to involve zero-trust authentication in the study. However, that expiration time has recently been removed in the latest update and now the sessions don’t expire. I tested the app for up to 1 hr 15 min to verify this. I also looked into the possibility of simulating an obfuscation attack in the AR users view on magic leap 2. For this I created a unity code that made a cube appear and disappear at random times in the AR users view. However, this application could not run in the background and override the view of remote assist. I also confirmed the support for interactive 3d objects (glb files) in the remote assist through their assemble functionality. This can potentially act as additional resources for guidance such as anatomy diagrams etc.
Furthermore, I read the following papers to understand the kind of security risks associated with the use of AR in various use cases and brainstorm replication of any such security attack in my own user study.
“Exploring User Reactions and Mental Models Towards Perceptual Manipulation
Attacks in Mixed Reality”
“When the User Is Inside the User Interface:
An Empirical Study of UI Security Properties in Augmented Reality”
“Accuracy of routine external ventricular drain placement following a mixed reality–guided twist-drill craniostomy”. I also read this paper, which is a good example of how the use of AR can contribute to the health-care industry. This particular paper helps locate the drilling point in a skull surgery more accurately.