Towards Enabling More Effective Locomotion in VR Using a Wheelchair-based Motion Platform

L. Puchalla Fiore, E. Coben, S. Merritt, P. Liu, V. Interrante

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper addresses two questions relevant to the design of effective locomotion methods for VR using a novel wheelchair motion simulation interface. First, we investigate the extent to which people's ability to keep track of where they are in an immersive virtual environment can be facilitated by actual physical movement (rotation and translation) in the context of vehicular travel. Second, we quantitatively analyze various characteristics of the travel paths produced by different types of locomotion control systems to gain insight into the aspects of control that can evoke or impede natural patterns of movement through a virtual environment. In a within-subjects experiment, we asked 35 volunteers to virtually search through 16 identical-looking boxes randomly placed within a realistically rendered, circularly symmetric virtual room to find 8 hidden targets. Participants performed this task under four different conditions of integrated visual and physical movement, controlled via a joystick interface attached to a motorized wheelchair. In all four cases participants 'drove' their virtual viewpoint using the joystick, but the nature of the accompanying physical movement varied between the conditions. The four conditions were: No physical movement; full physical rotation only; full physical translation and rotation; and "partial" physical translation and rotation, wherein the extent of the actual physical movement was proportionally reduced relative to the visually-indicated movement. Analysis of the search results did not find a statistically significant main effect of the physical movement condition on total distance traveled or total number of revisits to previously searched locations. However we did see a trend towards greater search accuracy in the full physical motion condition, with a greater proportion of perfect trials, a smaller proportion of failed searches, fewer boxes revisited on average, and more novel boxes searched before the first revisit in that condition than in the others. Analyzing the paths traveled, we found that the velocity and curvature profiles of the virtual motion paths enabled by our novel joystick-controlled wheelchair motion simulation interface were more qualitatively similar to those produced by natural walking than were travel paths we had previously observed when more basic joystick locomotion control methods were used. This suggests potential benefits in adopting a vehicle-simulation movement control method for joystick locomotion control in VR. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.6 [Methodology & Techniques]: Interaction techniques.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationJoint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE - EuroVR 2013 - Proceedings
EditorsDieter Fellner
PublisherEurographics Association
Pages83-90
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9783905674477
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
EventJoint Virtual Reality Conference of 19th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, EGVE 2013 and 10th Conference and Exhibition of the European Association of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, EuroVR 2013 - Paris, France
Duration: Dec 11 2013Dec 13 2013

Publication series

NameJoint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE - EuroVR 2013 - Proceedings

Conference

ConferenceJoint Virtual Reality Conference of 19th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, EGVE 2013 and 10th Conference and Exhibition of the European Association of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, EuroVR 2013
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityParis
Period12/11/1312/13/13

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through grant IIS-0713587 and by the Linda and Ted Johnson Digital Design Consortium endowment and lab setup funds. We are very grateful to Bernhard Riecke for encouraging us to explore this avenue of research and for providing valuable guidance in the design of our experiments.

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