Reduction of contradictory partial occlusion in mixed reality by using characteristics of transparency perception

One of the challenges in mixed reality (MR) applications is handling contradictory occlusions between real and virtual objects. The previous studies have tried to solve the occlusion problem by extracting the foreground region from the real image. However, real-time occlusion handling is still difficult since it takes too much computational cost to precisely segment foreground regions in a complex scene. In this study, therefore, we proposed an alternative solution to the occlusion problem that does not require precise foreground-background segmentation. In our method, a virtual object is blended with a real scene so that the virtual object can be perceived as being behind the foreground region. For this purpose, we first investigated characteristics of human transparency perception in a psychophysical experiment. Then we made a blending algorithm applicable to real scenes based on the results of the experiment.