immersive virtual environment
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Author(s):  
Shan Jiang ◽  
David Allison ◽  
Andrew T. Duchowski

Background: Navigating large hospitals can be very challenging due to the functional complexity as well as the evolving changes and expansions of such facilities. Hospital wayfinding issues could lead to stress, negative mood, and poor healthcare experience among patients, staff, and family members. Objectives: A survey-embedded experiment was conducted using immersive virtual environment (IVE) techniques to explore people’s wayfinding performance and their mood and spatial experience in hospital circulation spaces with or without visible greenspaces. Methods: Seventy-four participants were randomly assigned to either group to complete wayfinding tasks in a timed session. Participants’ wayfinding performances were interpreted using several indicators, including task completion, duration, walking distance, stop, sign-viewing, and route selection. Participants’ mood states and perceived environmental attractiveness and atmosphere were surveyed; their perceived levels of presence in the IVE hospitals were also reported. Results: The results revealed that participants performed better on high complexity wayfinding tasks in the IVE hospital with visible greenspaces, as indicated by less time consumed and shorter walking distance to find the correct destination, less frequent stops and sign viewing, and more efficient route selection. Participants also experienced enhanced mood states and favorable spatial experience and perceived aesthetics in the IVE hospital with visible greenspaces than the same environment without window views. IVE techniques could be an efficient tool to supplement environment-behavior studies with certain conditions noted. Conclusions: Hospital greenspaces located at key decision points could serve as landmarks that positively attract people’s attention, aid wayfinding, and improve their navigational experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Mohammad Shadman Hashem ◽  
Joolekha Bibi Joolee ◽  
Waseem Hassan ◽  
Seokhee Jeon

A complete set of diverse haptic feedbacks is essential for a highly realistic and immersive virtual environment. In this sense, a multi-mode haptic interface that simultaneously generates multiple kinds of haptic signals is highly desirable. In this paper, we propose a new silicone-made pneumatically controlled fingertip actuator to render pressure and vibrotactile feedback concurrently to offer a realistic and effective haptic sensation. A new silicone-based stacked dual-layer air chamber was designed. The volume of the chambers is controlled by pneumatic valves with compressed air tanks. The top/upper air chamber renders vibration feedback, whereas the bottom/lower air chamber renders pressure feedback. The proposed silicone-made fingertip actuator is designed so that it can be easily worn at the fingertips. To demonstrate the potential of the system, a virtual environment for rendering three different types of haptic textures was implemented. Extensive performance evaluation and user studies were carried out to demonstrate the proposed actuator’s effectiveness compared to an actuator with single vibrotactile feedback.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Degner ◽  
Lea Steep ◽  
Susanne Schmidt ◽  
Frank Steinicke

The use of virtual reality (VR) promises enormous potential for studying human behavior. While approach and avoidance tendencies have been explored in various areas of basic and applied psychology, such as attitude and emotion research, basic learning psychology, and behavior therapy, they have rarely been studied in VR. One major focus of this research is to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying automatic behavioral tendencies towards and away from positively or negatively evaluated stimuli. We implemented a whole-body movement stimulus-response compatibility task to explore approach-avoidance behavior in an immersive virtual environment. We chose attitudinal stimuli—spiders and butterflies—on which people widely agree in their general evaluations (in that people evaluate spiders negatively and butterflies positively), while there is still substantial inter-individual variance (i. e., the intensity in which people dislike spiders or like butterflies). We implemented two parallel approach-avoidance tasks, one in VR, one desktop-based. Both tasks revealed the expected compatibility effects that were positively intercorrelated. Interestingly, however, the compatibility effect in the VR measure was unrelated to participants’ self-reported fear of spiders and stimulus evaluations. These results raise important implications about the usage of VR to study automatic behavioral tendencies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Čeněk Šašinka ◽  
Jiří Chmelík ◽  
Alžběta Šašinková ◽  
Zdeněk Stachoň


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Duong Nguyen

<p>Throughout millennia, the human mind has been attributed to the advancements of human society today. Architecture, likewise, a result of human wit and intelligence. This research takes a particular interest in the architecture that is, pre-conceived before its existence. From the inception of this research, it began with a particular interest in this design process, or creative. The objective, to develop a means for people to design using their mental imagination. The objective, while novel and realistic, demonstrate itself to be highly challenging in its enormous complexity. The investigation focuses now settles towards the development of an “integrated foundational” brain-computer interface (BCI) to design architecture through meaningful and intentional design interactions through human brain activities in real-time inside an immersive virtual environment.  The research methodology deploys the conglomeration of the following of hardware:  • 14-Channel EPOC+ electroencephalograph (EEG) headset (a brain electrical activity detector) • High-end computer with VR capable graphics card • HTC Vive Virtual Reality (VR) Headset  In terms of software, CortexUI, a cloud-based platform to stream live EEG data, Grasshopper (GH), a commonly used architectural visual scripting plugin software, followed by Unity, a commonly used tool to develop interactive VR/3D environment. The user shall be wearing both EEG and the HMD to interactive with the presented material.  The EEG is used to detect brain activities through its electrodes measuring variation in of electrical potential caused by passing signals sent within the brain’s neurons. These raw data are transferred into Grasshopper in numerical forms, where these data are inputs to manipulate a series of pre-defined forms and interactions in Grasshopper, a plugin in Rhino software. The translation process involved data manipulation for desired design interaction, which altered the abstracted formal qualities of locations, scales, rotations, geometries and colours, with a minor implementation of certain artificial neural networks (ANN) within a design environment context. Virtual Reality consequently performs as a visualisation tool and immersing the user within that design interaction as well as become a design feedback tool. The user is stimulated to generate various design variations and able to capture that result in Rhino through baking the design in Grasshopper. The exported geometries act as an abstracted visualisation of the BCI system’s user’s mental state at that point in time.  The research outcome exceeded the aims & objectives from its “foundational” status in its ability to harbour multiple design interactive scenarios. However, there are considerable technical limitations and room for future research within this experiment, all of which shall be mentioned within the discussion section of this inquiry. A technical understanding and overall framework have been developed as a result of this study, tending towards creating a BCI-VR system to design architecture directly from the human imagination from the mind’s eye.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Duong Nguyen

<p>Throughout millennia, the human mind has been attributed to the advancements of human society today. Architecture, likewise, a result of human wit and intelligence. This research takes a particular interest in the architecture that is, pre-conceived before its existence. From the inception of this research, it began with a particular interest in this design process, or creative. The objective, to develop a means for people to design using their mental imagination. The objective, while novel and realistic, demonstrate itself to be highly challenging in its enormous complexity. The investigation focuses now settles towards the development of an “integrated foundational” brain-computer interface (BCI) to design architecture through meaningful and intentional design interactions through human brain activities in real-time inside an immersive virtual environment.  The research methodology deploys the conglomeration of the following of hardware:  • 14-Channel EPOC+ electroencephalograph (EEG) headset (a brain electrical activity detector) • High-end computer with VR capable graphics card • HTC Vive Virtual Reality (VR) Headset  In terms of software, CortexUI, a cloud-based platform to stream live EEG data, Grasshopper (GH), a commonly used architectural visual scripting plugin software, followed by Unity, a commonly used tool to develop interactive VR/3D environment. The user shall be wearing both EEG and the HMD to interactive with the presented material.  The EEG is used to detect brain activities through its electrodes measuring variation in of electrical potential caused by passing signals sent within the brain’s neurons. These raw data are transferred into Grasshopper in numerical forms, where these data are inputs to manipulate a series of pre-defined forms and interactions in Grasshopper, a plugin in Rhino software. The translation process involved data manipulation for desired design interaction, which altered the abstracted formal qualities of locations, scales, rotations, geometries and colours, with a minor implementation of certain artificial neural networks (ANN) within a design environment context. Virtual Reality consequently performs as a visualisation tool and immersing the user within that design interaction as well as become a design feedback tool. The user is stimulated to generate various design variations and able to capture that result in Rhino through baking the design in Grasshopper. The exported geometries act as an abstracted visualisation of the BCI system’s user’s mental state at that point in time.  The research outcome exceeded the aims & objectives from its “foundational” status in its ability to harbour multiple design interactive scenarios. However, there are considerable technical limitations and room for future research within this experiment, all of which shall be mentioned within the discussion section of this inquiry. A technical understanding and overall framework have been developed as a result of this study, tending towards creating a BCI-VR system to design architecture directly from the human imagination from the mind’s eye.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James Holth

<p>Architects work within the medium of digital space on a day-to-day basis, yet never truly get to experience the spaces they are creating until after they’re built. This creates a disconnect in the design process that can lead to unexpected and unwanted results. Human perception is a powerful instrument and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, coupled with more complex digital environments, could enable designers to take advantage of this. Through virtually inhabiting the space they are creating while they are creating it, designers can pre-visualise spatial qualities. These digital tools are experiencing a shift from technology still in development to a fully-fledged research instrument. With a growing level of technical literacy within the architectural discipline they could have the same revolutionary impact that the introduction of computers had in the late-twentieth century.  This thesis explores the potential of VR technology for processes of architectural design by assessing their combined ability to analyse a user’s perception of spatial qualities; in particular the sensation of people density within the work environment. Starting with a review of current literature in architecture and perception based science. A framework is proposed by which to assess the impacts of spatial characteristics within an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE). This is followed by a design-led series of iterative framework developments centred on increasing user immersion within digital space. Through this methodology a greater understanding is obtained of users perceptions of spatial characteristics and of the process required to design iteratively within an IVE framework.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James Holth

<p>Architects work within the medium of digital space on a day-to-day basis, yet never truly get to experience the spaces they are creating until after they’re built. This creates a disconnect in the design process that can lead to unexpected and unwanted results. Human perception is a powerful instrument and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, coupled with more complex digital environments, could enable designers to take advantage of this. Through virtually inhabiting the space they are creating while they are creating it, designers can pre-visualise spatial qualities. These digital tools are experiencing a shift from technology still in development to a fully-fledged research instrument. With a growing level of technical literacy within the architectural discipline they could have the same revolutionary impact that the introduction of computers had in the late-twentieth century.  This thesis explores the potential of VR technology for processes of architectural design by assessing their combined ability to analyse a user’s perception of spatial qualities; in particular the sensation of people density within the work environment. Starting with a review of current literature in architecture and perception based science. A framework is proposed by which to assess the impacts of spatial characteristics within an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE). This is followed by a design-led series of iterative framework developments centred on increasing user immersion within digital space. Through this methodology a greater understanding is obtained of users perceptions of spatial characteristics and of the process required to design iteratively within an IVE framework.</p>


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