Focus-Aware Task Guidance: Adaptive AR Instruction Playback Via Gaze and Location Tracking

Augmented Reality (AR) has demonstrated significant potential in task guidance by offering hands-free, context-sensitive instructions. However, effective AR-based task guidance requires maintaining user focus, as lapses in attention can lead to inefficiencies and errors. This paper describes a novel approach for integrating real-time gaze and location tracking to dynamically adapt AR task guidance, adjusting the playback speed accordingly. A user study with 20 participants assessed the effectiveness of gaze-based and locationbased focus detection across four conditions: baseline, gaze-only, location-only, and combined interaction. The results indicate that both gaze-based and location-based guidance significantly reduce error rates and improve task efficiency, however, the simultaneous use of both methods leads to cognitive overload, increased errors, and interaction complexity. Participants found that the adaptive playback speed adjustments helped manage attention. These findings highlight the importance of balancing adaptive cues in AR task guidance to optimize user performance without overwhelming cognitive resources.