Virtual Locomotion: Walking in Place through Virtual Environments

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 598-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
James N. Templeman ◽  
Patricia S. Denbrook ◽  
Linda E. Sibert

This paper presents both an analysis of requirements for user control over simulated locomotion and a new control technique designed to meet these requirements. The goal is to allow the user to move through virtual environments in as similar a manner as possible to walking through the real world. We approach this problem by examining the interrelationships between motion control and the other actions people use to act, sense, and react to their environment. If the interactions between control actions and sensory feedback can be made comparable to those of actions in the real world, then there is hope for constructing an effective new technique. Candidate solutions are reviewed once the analysis is developed. This analysis leads to a promising new design for a sensor-based virtual locomotion called Gaiter. The new control allows users to direct their movement through virtual environments by stepping in place. The movement of a person's legs is sensed, and in-place walking is treated as a gesture indicating the user intends to take a virtual step. More specifically, the movement of the user's legs determines the direction, extent, and timing of their movement through virtual environments. Tying virtual locomotion to leg motion allows a person to step in any direction and control the stride length and cadence of his virtual steps. The user can walk straight, turn in place, and turn while advancing. Motion is expressed in a body-centric coordinate system similar to that of actual stepping. The system can discriminate between gestural and actual steps, so both types of steps can be intermixed.

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (12) ◽  
pp. 105-110
Author(s):  
Omar A.A. Orqueda ◽  
José Figueroa ◽  
Osvaldo E. Agamennoni

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Reuding ◽  
Pamela Meil

The predictive value and the reliability of evaluations made in immersive projection environments are limited when compared to the real world. As in other applications of numerical simulations, the acceptance of such techniques does not only depend on the stability of the methods, but also on the quality and credibility of the results obtained. In this paper, we investigate the predictive value of virtual reality and virtual environments when used for engineering assessment tasks. We examine the ergonomics evaluation of a vehicle interior, which is a complex activity relying heavily on know-how gained from personal experience, and compare performance in a VE with performance in the real world. If one assumes that within complex engineering processes certain types of work will be performed by more or less the same personnel, one can infer that a fairly consistent base of experience-based knowledge exists. Under such premises and if evaluations are conducted as comparisons within the VE, we believe that the reliability of the assessments is suitable for conceptual design work. Despite a number of unanswered questions at this time we believe this study leads to a better understanding of what determines the reliability of results obtained in virtual environments, thus making it useful for optimizing virtual prototyping processes and better utilization of the potential of VR and VEs in company work processes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy F. Brady ◽  
Viola S. Störmer ◽  
Anna Shafer-Skelton ◽  
Jamal Rodgers Williams ◽  
Angus F. Chapman ◽  
...  

Both visual attention and visual working memory tend to be studied with very simple stimuli and low-level paradigms, designed to allow us to understand the representations and processes in detail, or with fully realistic stimuli that make such precise understanding difficult but are more representative of the real world. In this chapter we argue for an intermediate approach in which visual attention and visual working memory are studied by scaling up from the simplest settings to more complex settings that capture some aspects of the complexity of the real-world, while still remaining in the realm of well-controlled stimuli and well-understood tasks. We believe this approach, which we have been taking in our labs, will allow a more generalizable set of knowledge about visual attention and visual working memory while maintaining the rigor and control that is typical of vision science and psychophysics studies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1797
Author(s):  
Chen ◽  
Lin

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology that allows users to interact with simulated environments, including those emulating scenes in the real world. Most current AR technologies involve the placement of virtual objects within these scenes. However, difficulties in modeling real-world objects greatly limit the scope of the simulation, and thus the depth of the user experience. In this study, we developed a process by which to realize virtual environments that are based entirely on scenes in the real world. In modeling the real world, the proposed scheme divides scenes into discrete objects, which are then replaced with virtual objects. This enables users to interact in and with virtual environments without limitations. An RGB-D camera is used in conjunction with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) to obtain the movement trajectory of the user and derive information related to the real environment. In modeling the environment, graph-based segmentation is used to segment point clouds and perform object segmentation to enable the subsequent replacement of objects with equivalent virtual entities. Superquadrics are used to derive shape parameters and location information from the segmentation results in order to ensure that the scale of the virtual objects matches the original objects in the real world. Only after the objects have been replaced with their virtual counterparts in the real environment converted into a virtual scene. Experiments involving the emulation of real-world locations demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed rendering scheme. A rock-climbing application scenario is finally presented to illustrate the potential use of the proposed system in AR applications.


2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 777-785 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebru Cubukcu ◽  
Jack L Nasar

Discrepanices between perceived and actual distance may affect people's spatial behavior. In a previous study Nasar, using self report of behavior, found that segmentation (measured through the number of buildings) along the route affected choice of parking garage and path from the parking garage to a destination. We recreated that same environment in a three-dimensional virtual environment and conducted a test to see whether the same factors emerged under these more controlled conditions and to see whether spatial behavior in the virtual environment accurately reflected behavior in the real environment. The results confirmed similar patterns of response in the virtual and real environments. This supports the use of virtual reality as a tool for predicting behavior in the real world and confirms increases in segmentation as related to increases in perceived distance.


2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-476
Author(s):  
PETER SWIRSKI

The enduring success of any roman-à-clef owes to the ghost of the real world lurking, like a palimpsest, behind the storyworld. Barring a few counterfactual twists, Richard Condon's Death of a Politician follows the chequered career of a dead-ringer for Richard Milhous Nixon through the war-scam 1940s, the red scare 1950s, and the freewheeling-dealing 1960s. Square the revisionist drive of Condon's political fiction with the premise of historical veracity, and you may wonder where sober fact ends and fiction begins. How much of Nixon lies in Walter Bodmor Slurrie? How much of Nixon's banker and confidant “Bebe” Rebozo lies in Slurrie's banker and confidant “Kiddo” Cardozo? How much of the Miami mobster Mayer Lansky lies in Cardozo's boss, Miami mobster Abner Danzig? How much of their crass venality and control is the figment of Condon's imagination? Better still, how much is true? In my article I set out to answer all these questions, using Condon's roman-à-clef as a springboard for analysis of salient aspects of the Nixon presidency and of American electoral politics in general.


Author(s):  
Zack Fitzsimmons ◽  
Omer Lev

While manipulative attacks on elections have been well-studied, only recently has attention turned to attacks that account for geographic information, which are extremely common in the real world. The most well known in the media is gerrymandering, in which district border-lines are changed to increase a party's chance to win, but a different geographical manipulation involves influencing the election by selecting the location of polling places, as many people are not willing to go to any distance to vote. In this paper we initiate the study of this manipulation. We find that while it is easy to manipulate the selection of polling places on the line, it becomes difficult already on the plane or in the case of more than two candidates. Moreover, we show that for more than two candidates the problem is inapproximable. However, we find a few restricted cases on the plane where some algorithms perform well. Finally, we discuss how existing results for standard control actions hold in the geographic setting, consider additional control actions in the geographic setting, and suggest directions for future study.


Author(s):  
Hannah M. Solini ◽  
Ayush Bhargava ◽  
Christopher C. Pagano

It is often questioned whether task performance attained in a virtual environment can be transferred appropriately and accurately to the same task in the real world. With advancements in virtual reality (VR) technology, recent research has focused on individuals’ abilities to transfer calibration achieved in a virtual environment to a real-world environment. Little research, however, has shown whether transfer of calibration from a virtual environment to the real world is similar to transfer of calibration from a virtual environment to another virtual environment. As such, the present study investigated differences in calibration transfer to real-world and virtual environments. In either a real-world or virtual environment, participants completed blind walking estimates before and after experiencing perturbed virtual optic flow via a head-mounted virtual display (HMD). Results showed that individuals calibrated to perturbed virtual optic flow and that this calibration carried over to both real-world and virtual environments in a like manner.


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