In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) have been used to provide an immersive, first-person view in real-time for the remote-control of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). One critical issue is that it is challenging to perceive the distance of obstacles surrounding the vehicle from 2D views in the HMD, which deteriorates the control of UGV. Conventional distance indicators used in HMD take up screen space which leads clutter on the display and can further reduce situation awareness of the physical environment. To address the issue, in this paper we propose off-screen in-device feedback using vibro-tactile and/or light-visual cues to provide real-time distance information for the remote control of UGV. Results from a study show a significantly better performance with either feedback type, reduced workload and improved usability in a driving task that requires continuous perception of the distance between the UGV and its environmental objects or obstacles. Our findings show a solid case for in-device vibro-tactile and/or light-visual feedback to support remote operation of UGVs that highly relies on distance perception of objects.
Virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMD) have recently been used to provide an immersive, first-person vision/view in real-time for manipulating remotely-controlled unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). The teleoperation of UGV can be challenging for operators when it is done in real time. One big challenge is for operators to perceive quickly and rapidly the distance of objects that are around the UGV while it is moving. In this research, we explore the use of monoscopic and stereoscopic views and display types (immersive and non-immersive VR) for operating vehicles remotely. We conducted t…
Institute of Computer Science II – Computer Graphics, University of Bonn（波恩大学计算机科学II系——计算机图形学）；Institute of Computer Science VI – Autonomous Intelligent Systems, University of Bonn（波恩大学计算机科学VI系——自主智能系统）
Applications like disaster management and industrial inspection often require experts to enter contaminated places. To circumvent the need for physical presence, it is desirable to generate a fully immersive individual live teleoperation experience. However, standard video-based approaches suffer from a limited degree of immersion and situation awareness due to the restriction to the camera view, which impacts the navigation. In this paper, we present a novel VR-based practical system for immersive robot teleoperation and scene exploration. While being operated through the scene, a robot captu…
We study the performance and user experience of two popular mainstream text entry devices, desktop keyboards and touchscreen keyboards, for use in Virtual Reality (VR) applications. We discuss the limitations arising from limited visual feedback, and examine the efficiency of different strategies of use. We analyze a total of 24 hours of typing data in VR from 24 participants and find that novice users are able to retain about 60% of their typing speed on a desktop keyboard and about 40-45\% of their typing speed on a touchscreen keyboard. We also find no significant learning effects, indicati…
This paper analyzes the distracted pedestrians' waiting time before crossing the road in three conditions: 1) not distracted, 2) distracted with a smartphone and 3) distracted with a smartphone in the presence of virtual flashing LED lights on the crosswalk as a safety measure. For the means of data collection, we adapted an in-house developed virtual immersive reality environment (VIRE). A total of 42 volunteers participated in the experiment. Participants' positions and head movements were recorded and used to calculate walking speeds, acceleration and deceleration rates, surrogate safety me…
A novel head-mounted virtual immersive/interactive reality environment (VIRE) is utilized to evaluate the behaviour of participants in three pedestrian road crossing conditions while 1) not distracted, 2) distracted with a smartphone, and 3) distracted with a smartphone with a virtually implemented safety measure on the road. Forty-two volunteers participated in our research who completed thirty successful (complete crossing) trials in blocks of ten trials for each crossing condition. For the two distracted conditions, pedestrians are engaged in a maze-solving game on a virtual smartphone, whi…
The arrival of head-mounted displays (HMDs) to the consumer market requires a novel content format that is, first, adapted to the specificities of immersive displays and, second, that takes into account the current reality of multi-display media consumption. We review the requirements for such content format and report on existing initiatives, some of our own, towards implementing such content format.
We are experiencing an upcoming trend of using head mounted display systems in games and serious games, which is likely to become an established practice in the near future. While these systems provide highly immersive experiences, many users have been reporting discomfort symptoms, such as nausea, sickness, and headaches, among others. When using VR for health applications, this is more critical, since the discomfort may interfere a lot in treatments. In this work we discuss possible causes of these issues, and present possible solutions as design guidelines that may mitigate them. In this co…
Immersive Analytics (IA) and consumer adoption of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) are both rapidly growing. When used in conjunction, stereoscopic IA environments can offer improved user understanding and engagement; however, it is unclear how the choice of stereoscopic display impacts user interactions within an IA environment. This paper presents a pilot study that examines the impact of stereoscopic display type on object manipulation and environmental navigation using consumer-available AR and VR displays. This work finds that the display type c…
University of Dayton（代顿大学）；University of North Georgia（北乔治亚大学）
We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instruct…
Collaboration in immersive systems can be achieved by using an immersive display system (i.e. CAVE and Head-Mounted Display), but how do we communicate immersion cross-surface for low immersive displays, such as desktops, tablets, and smartphones? In this paper, we present a discussion of proxemics and kinesics to support based on observation of physical collaboration. We present our research agenda to investigate low-cost multi-sensory output cues to communicate proxemics and kinesics aspects cross-surface. Doing so may increase the level of presence, co-presence, and immersion, and improve t…
Distributed systems technologies supporting 3D visualization and social collaboration will be increasing in frequency and type over time. An emerging type of head-mounted display referred to as the head-mounted projection display (HMPD) was recently developed that only requires ultralight optics (i.e., less than 8 g per eye) that enables immersive multiuser, mobile augmented reality 3D visualization, as well as remote 3D collaborations. In this paper a review of the development of lightweight HMPD technology is provided, together with insight into what makes this technology timely and so uniqu…
Recent research has proposed teleoperation of robotic and aerial vehicles using head motion tracked by a head-mounted display (HMD). First-person views of the vehicles are usually captured by onboard cameras and presented to users through the display panels of HMDs. This provides users with a direct, immersive and intuitive interface for viewing and control. However, a typically overlooked factor in such designs is the latency introduced by the vehicle dynamics. As head motion is coupled with visual updates in such applications, visual and control latency always exists between the issue of con…
Urban design is a highly visual discipline that requires visualization for informed decision making. However, traditional urban design tools are mostly limited to representations on 2D displays that lack intuitive awareness. The popularity of head-mounted displays (HMDs) promotes a promising alternative with consumer-grade 3D displays. We introduce UrbanVR, an immersive analytics system with effective visualization and interaction techniques, to enable architects to assess designs in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Specifically, UrbanVR incorporates 1) a customized parallel coordinates plo…
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering（机械工程系）；Dept. of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学计算机科学系）
Teleoperation platforms often require the user to be situated at a fixed location to both visualize and control the movement of the robot and thus do not provide the operator with much mobility. One example is in existing robotic surgery solutions that require the surgeons to be away from the patient, attached to consoles where their heads must be fixed and their arms can only move in a limited space. This creates a barrier between physicians and patients that does not exist in normal surgery. To address this issue, we propose a mobile telesurgery solution where the surgeons are no longer mech…
Optical see-though head-mounted displays (OST HMDs) are one of the key technologies for merging virtual objects and physical scenes to provide an immersive mixed reality (MR) environment to its user. A fundamental limitation of HMDs is, that the user itself cannot be augmented conveniently as, in casual posture, only the distal upper extremities are within the field of view of the HMD. Consequently, most MR applications that are centered around the user, such as virtual dressing rooms or learning of body movements, cannot be realized with HMDs. In this paper, we propose a novel concept and pro…
Immersive virtual reality (VR) emerges as a promising research and clinical tool. However, several studies suggest that VR induced adverse symptoms and effects (VRISE) may undermine the health and safety standards, and the reliability of the scientific results. In the current literature review, the technical reasons for the adverse symptomatology are investigated to provide suggestions and technological knowledge for the implementation of VR head-mounted display (HMD) systems in cognitive neuroscience. The technological systematic literature indicated features pertinent to display, sound, moti…
In this paper, we present an implementation of a leaning-based control of a differential drive telepresence robot and a user study in simulation, with the goal of bringing the same functionality to a real telepresence robot. The participants used a balance board to control the robot and viewed the virtual environment through a head-mounted display. The main motivation for using a balance board as the control device stems from Virtual Reality (VR) sickness; even small movements of your own body matching the motions seen on the screen decrease the sensory conflict between vision and vestibular o…
Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to transform knowledge work. One advantage of VR knowledge work is that it allows extending 2D displays into the third dimension, enabling new operations, such as selecting overlapping objects or displaying additional layers of information. On the other hand, mobile knowledge workers often work on established mobile devices, such as tablets, limiting interaction with those devices to a small input space. This challenge of a constrained input space is intensified in situations when VR knowledge work is situated in cramped environments, such as airplanes an…
Based on the improvement of recent virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) Head Mounted Display (HMD), there have been attempts to adopt VR and AR in various fields. Since VR and AR could provide more immersive experimental environments and stimuli than 2D settings in a cost-efficient way, psychological and cognitive researchers are particularly interested in using these platforms. However, there is still an entry barrier for researchers who are not familiar with Unity programming, and current VR/AR HMDs could also cause unexpected errors during the experiment. Therefore, we developed a Unit…
