Design of a 3D Navigation Technique Supporting VR Interaction

2009

Navigation in virtual environments is a complex task which imposes a high cognitive load on the user. It consists on maintaining knowledge of current position and orientation of the user while he moves through the space. In this paper, we present a novel approach for navigation in 3D virtual environments. The method is based on the principle of skiing, and the idea is to provide to the user a total control of his navigation speed and rotation using his two hands. This technique enables user-steered exploration by determining the direction and the speed of motion using the knowledge of the positions of the user hands. A module of speed control is included to the technique to easily control the speed using the angle between the hands. The direction of motion is given by the orthogonal axis of the segment joining the two hands. A user study will show the efficiency of the method in performing exploration tasks in complex 3D large-scale environments. Furthermore, we proposed an experimental protocol to prove that this technique presents a high level of navigation guidance and control, achieving significantly better performance in comparison to simple navigation techniques.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013

3D environments have been used in many applications. Besides the use of keyboard and mouse, best suited for desktop environments, other devices emerged for specific use in immersive environments. The lack of standardization in the use and in the control mapping of these devices makes the design task more challenging. We performed an exploratory study involving beginners and advanced users in the use of three devices in 3D environments: Keyboard-Mouse, Wiimote and Flystick. The navigation in this kind of environment is done through three tools: Fly, Examine and Walk. The study results showed how the interaction in virtual reality environments is affected by the navigation mechanism, the device, and the user's previous experience. The results may be used to inform the future design of virtual reality environments.

IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), 2019

Travel in a real environment is a common task that human beings conduct easily and subconsciously. However transposing this task in virtual environments (VEs) remains challenging due to input devices and techniques. Considering the well-described sensory conflict theory, we present a semiautomatic travel method based on path planning algorithms and gaze-directed control, aiming at reducing the generation of conflicted signals that may confuse the central nervous system. Since gaze-directed control is user-centered and path planning is goal-oriented, our semiautomatic technique makes up for the deficiencies of each with smoother and less jerky trajectories.

2001

In this paper we present a multimodal interface for navigating in arbitrary virtual VRML worlds. Conventional haptic devices like keyboard, mouse, joystick and touchscreen can freely be combined with special Virtual-Reality hardware like spacemouse, data glove and position tracker. As a key feature, the system additionally provides intuitive input by command and natural speech utterances as well as dynamic head and hand gestures. The commuication of the interface components is based on the abstract formalism of a context-free grammar, allowing the representation of deviceindependent information. Taking into account the current system context, user interactions are combined in a semantic unification process and mapped on a model of the viewer's functionality vocabulary. To integrate the continuous multimodal information stream we use a straight-forward rulebased approach and a new technique based on evolutionary algorithms. Our navigation interface has extensively been evaluated in usability studies, obtaining excellent results.

Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '01, 2001

We present a task-based taxonomy of navigation techniques for 3D virtual environments, used to categorize existing techniques, drive exploration of the design space, and inspire new techniques. We briefly discuss several new techniques, and describe in detail one new technique, Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting. This technique couples control of movement speed to camera height and tilt, allowing users to seamlessly transition between local environment-views and global overviews. Users can also orbit specific objects for inspection. Results from two competitive user studies suggest users performed better with Speed-coupled Flying with Orbiting over alternatives, with performance also enhanced by a large display.

In this research, we implemented the 3D interactive interface for city navigation, and used an infrared 3D tracker as an interaction input device in VR CAVE. The design of 3D interface was evaluated by cognitive approach while navigating with a handheld sensor in the VR CAVE. According to the results of cognitive experiment, some revised design guidelines are proposed for further 3D navigation interface.

vrais, 1997

2011 IEEE International Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems Proceedings, 2011

This paper evaluates two different interfaces for navigation in a 3D environment. The first is a 'Click-to-Move' style interface that involves using a mouse. The second is a gaming style interface that uses both mouse and keyboard (i.e. the 'WASD' keys) for view direction and movement respectively. In the user study, participants were asked to navigate a supermarket environment and collect a specific subset of items. Results revealed significant differences only for some of the submeasures. Yet, some revealing observations were made regarding user behavior and interaction with the user interface.

… VR Workshop: New Directions in 3D …, 2005

Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds

In the last decade, it has been observed an extraordinary acceleration in immersive technologies, including virtual and augmented reality (VR/ AR), as well as innovative experience design. The VR interfaces have widely explored various 3D interaction-based approaches. This technology encourages users to use diverse input devices (e.g., VR headset). However, such devices are still not very reliable, inconvenient and invasive to the person's comfort. Furthermore, users may have an inefficient experience for interacting with objects in a virtual environment. Fortunately, there exists an innovative interaction methods called Natural User Interfaces (NUIs). These interfaces are increasingly introduced in Human Machine Interaction (HMI) systems and they introduce the gestures recognition. They became more useful, improving the user's engagement and sense of presence, providing more stimulating, user-friendly and non-obtrusive interaction methods. In this paper, we present an efficient 3D interaction technique. This technique uses a gesture recognition for 3D interaction tasks (navigation, selection, manipulation and application control).This new approarch called Zoom-fwd, it allows a speed and precise interaction with distant and occulded objects.Zoom-fwd technique is a software solution for many problems, which can be related to the hardware or even to the software ones. A user study was carried out to investigate the impact of this 3D interaction technique on time completion of the different tasks. To do this study, we compare the Zoom-fwd technique with another 3D interaction technique.