778 research outputs found
An evaluation testbed for locomotion in virtual reality
A common operation performed in Virtual Reality (VR) environments is locomotion. Although real walking can represent a natural and intuitive way to manage displacements in such environments, its use is generally limited by the size of the area tracked by the VR system (typically, the size of a room) or requires expensive technologies to cover particularly extended settings. A number of approaches have been proposed to enable effective explorations in VR, each characterized by different hardware requirements and costs, and capable to provide different levels of usability and performance. However, the lack of a well-defined methodology for assessing and comparing available approaches makes it difficult to identify, among the various alternatives, the best solutions for selected application domains. To deal with this issue, this paper introduces a novel evaluation testbed which, by building on the outcomes of many separate works reported in the literature, aims to support a comprehensive analysis of the considered design space. An experimental protocol for collecting objective and subjective measures is proposed, together with a scoring system able to rank locomotion approaches based on a weighted set of requirements. Testbed usage is illustrated in a use case requesting to select the technique to adopt in a given application scenario
Three levels of metric for evaluating wayfinding
Three levels of virtual environment (VE) metric are proposed, based on: (1) users’ task performance (time taken, distance traveled and number of errors made), (2) physical behavior (locomotion, looking around, and time and error classification), and (3) decision making (i.e., cognitive) rationale (think aloud, interview and questionnaire). Examples of the use of these metrics are drawn from a detailed review of research into VE wayfinding. A case study from research into the fidelity that is required for efficient VE wayfinding is presented, showing the unsuitability in some circumstances of common metrics of task performance such as time and distance, and the benefits to be gained by making fine-grained analyses of users’ behavior. Taken as a whole, the article highlights the range of techniques that have been successfully used to evaluate wayfinding and explains in detail how some of these techniques may be applied
Safe, Remote-Access Swarm Robotics Research on the Robotarium
This paper describes the development of the Robotarium -- a remotely
accessible, multi-robot research facility. The impetus behind the Robotarium is
that multi-robot testbeds constitute an integral and essential part of the
multi-agent research cycle, yet they are expensive, complex, and time-consuming
to develop, operate, and maintain. These resource constraints, in turn, limit
access for large groups of researchers and students, which is what the
Robotarium is remedying by providing users with remote access to a
state-of-the-art multi-robot test facility. This paper details the design and
operation of the Robotarium as well as connects these to the particular
considerations one must take when making complex hardware remotely accessible.
In particular, safety must be built in already at the design phase without
overly constraining which coordinated control programs the users can upload and
execute, which calls for minimally invasive safety routines with provable
performance guarantees.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 code samples, 72 reference
Design methodology for 360° immersive video applications: the case study of a cultural heritage virtual tour
Three hundred sixty–degree (360°) immersive video applications for Head Mounted Display (HMD) devices offer great potential in providing engaging forms of experiential media solutions especially in Cultural Heritage education. Design challenges emerge though by this new kind of immersive media due to the 2D form of resources used for their construction, the lack of depth, the limited interaction and the need to address the sense of presence. In addition, the use of Virtual Reality (VR) headsets often causes nausea, or motion sickness effects imposing further implications in moderate motion design tasks. This paper introduces a methodological categorisation of tasks and techniques for the design of 360° immersive video applications. Following the design approach presented, a testbed application has been created as an immersive interactive virtual tour at the historical centre of the city of Rethymno in Crete, Greece, which has undergone user trials. Based on the analysis of the results of this study, a set of design guidelines for the implementation of 360° immersive video virtual tours is proposed
Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 361)
This bibliography lists 141 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during Mar. 1992. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and physiology, life support systems and man/system technology, protective clothing, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, planetary biology, and flight crew behavior and performance
NaviFields: relevance fields for adaptive VR navigation
Virtual Reality allow users to explore virtual environments naturally, by moving their head and body. However, the size of the environments they can explore is limited by real world constraints, such as the tracking technology or the physical space available. Existing techniques removing these limitations often break the metaphor of natural navigation in VR (e.g. steering techniques), involve control commands (e.g., teleporting) or hinder precise navigation (e.g., scaling user's displacements). This paper proposes NaviFields, which quantify the requirements for precise navigation of each point of the environment, allowing natural navigation within relevant areas, while scaling users' displacements when travelling across non-relevant spaces. This expands the size of the navigable space, retains the natural navigation metaphor and still allows for areas with precise control of the virtual head. We present a formal description of our NaviFields technique, which we compared against two alternative solutions (i.e., homogeneous scaling and natural navigation). Our results demonstrate our ability to cover larger spaces, introduce minimal disruption when travelling across bigger distances and improve very significantly the precise control of the viewpoint inside relevant areas
The Comparison Of Dome And HMD Delivery Systems: A Case Study
For effective astronaut training applications, choosing the right display devices to present images is crucial. In order to assess what devices are appropriate, it is important to design a successful virtual environment for a comparison study of the display devices. We present a comprehensive system, a Virtual environment testbed (VET), for the comparison of Dome and Head Mounted Display (HMD) systems on an SGI Onyx workstation. By writing codelets, we allow a variety of virtual scenarios and subjects' information to be loaded without programming or changing the code. This is part of an ongoing research project conducted by the NASA / JSC
Towards Next Generation of Pedestrian and Connected Vehicle In-the-loop Research: A Digital Twin Simulation Framework
Digital Twin is an emerging technology that replicates real-world entities
into a digital space. It has attracted increasing attention in the
transportation field and many researchers are exploring its future applications
in the development of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies.
Connected vehicles (CVs) and pedestrians are among the major traffic
participants in ITS. However, the usage of Digital Twin in research involving
both CV and pedestrian remains largely unexplored. In this study, a Digital
Twin framework for CV and pedestrian in-the-loop simulation is proposed. The
proposed framework consists of the physical world, the digital world, and data
transmission in between. The features for the entities (CV and pedestrian) that
need digital twined are divided into external state and internal state, and the
attributes in each state are described. We also demonstrate a sample
architecture under the proposed Digital Twin framework, which is based on
Carla-Sumo Co-simulation and Cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). The
proposed framework is expected to provide guidance to the future Digital Twin
research, and the architecture we build can serve as the testbed for further
research and development of ITS applications on CV and pedestrian
A study of event traffic during the shared manipulation of objects within a collaborative virtual environment
Event management must balance consistency and responsiveness above the requirements of shared object interaction within a Collaborative Virtual Environment
(CVE) system. An understanding of the event traffic during collaborative tasks helps in the design of all aspects of a CVE system. The application, user activity, the display
interface, and the network resources, all play a part in determining the characteristics of event management.
Linked cubic displays lend themselves well to supporting natural social human communication between remote users. To allow users to communicate naturally and subconsciously, continuous and detailed tracking is necessary. This, however, is hard to balance with the real-time consistency constraints of general shared object interaction.
This paper aims to explain these issues through a detailed examination of event traffic produced by a typical CVE, using both immersive and desktop displays, while supporting a variety of collaborative activities. We analyze event traffic during a highly collaborative task requiring various forms of shared object manipulation, including the concurrent manipulation of a shared object. Event sources are categorized and the influence of the form of object sharing as well as the display device
interface are detailed. With the presented findings the paper wishes to aid the design of future systems
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