Human Walking in Virtual Environments: Perception, Technology, and Applications

402 Pages·2013·8.64 MB·English

by  David Waller, Eric Hodgson (auth.), Frank Steinicke, Yon Visell, Jennifer Campos, Anatole Lécuyer (eds.)

Frank Steinicke
Yon Visell
Jennifer Campos
Anatole Lécuyer Editors
Human Walking
in Virtual
Environments
Perception, Technology,
and Applications
Human Walking in Virtual Environments
Frank Steinicke Yon Visell
•
Jennifer Campos Anatole Lécuyer
•
Editors
Human Walking in
Virtual Environments
Perception, Technology, and Applications
123
Editors
Frank Steinicke JenniferCampos
Universityof Würzburg TorontoRehabilitation Institute
Würzburg Universityof Toronto
Germany Toronto, ON
Canada
YonVisell
Electrical andComputer Engineering Anatole Lécuyer
Department NationalInstituteforResearchinComputer
DrexelUniversity Science and Control(INRIA)
Philadelphia, PA Rennes
USA France
ISBN 978-1-4419-8431-9 ISBN 978-1-4419-8432-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8432-6
SpringerNewYorkHeidelbergDordrechtLondon
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2013937207
(cid:2)SpringerScience+BusinessMediaNewYork2013
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Foreword
Walking, strutting, running, shuffling, tiptoeing, climbing, or pirouetting—people
move on foot through an impressive variety of activities and contexts. Not sur-
prisingly, there has been a keen scientific awareness and a growing body of
knowledge surrounding ways that people execute tasks involving locomotion and
how they perceive their environment and its contents during the course of
movement on foot. In parallel, locomotion is increasingly seen as a natural and
promising means of moving in virtual environments. A number of important
questions pertain to how virtual walking may be afforded in new computational
systems and how self-motion is affected and perceived in virtual environments.
Finally, there is a growing consensus that locomotion in augmented and virtual
reality environments may be relevant to a wide range of emerging applications,
from immersive training simulations, to entertainment and video games.
This book concerns the science and engineering of walking in virtual environ-
ments. It is an attempt to bring together, for the first time in one volume, contri-
butionsfromagrowinginterdisciplinarybodyofknowledgeonhumanself-motion
perception, the multisensory nature of walking, conceptual design approaches,
current technologies, and applications. The use of VR and movement simulation
systemsisbecomingpopularandmoreaccessiblewithinavarietyofresearchfields
andapplications.Manyoftherelevantsimulationtechnologiesinitiallyfocusedon
developing realistic, interactive visual environments. However, it is becoming
apparent that our everyday interactions are highly multisensory. Therefore,
investigators are beginning to understand the critical importance of walking
interfacesthatcanallowforrealistic,naturalbehaviors.Thisbookaimstopresent
an overview of what is currently understood about human perception and perfor-
mancewhenmovinginvirtualenvironmentsandtosituateitrelativetothebroader
scientificandengineering literature onhumanlocomotionandwalkinginterfaces.
Thecontentsincludescientificbackgroundandrecentempiricalfindingsrelatedto
biomechanics, selfmotion perception, and physical interactions. The book also
discusses conceptual approaches to multimodal sensing, display systems, and
interactionforwalkinginrealandvirtualenvironments.Finally,itpresentscurrent
v
vi Foreword
andemergingapplicationsinareassuchasgaitandposturerehabilitation,gaming,
sports, andarchitecturaldesign.
The organization of this book largely reflects the level of interdisciplinarity of
the topical area it addresses,touching on aspects related tohuman perceptionand
action, virtual reality technologies, and their applications in human–computer
interaction design, immersive simulation, health care, and entertainment.
Walking as Perception and Action
Locomotioncanbeseentoservetwokeytasks:thoseofmovementandofsensory
awareness, i.e., ofaction and perception. On onehand,the mostbasic functionof
walking might be said to be that of self-motion. A hallmark of our species is that
we travel, stand, and otherwise negotiate our surroundings in a mostly bipedal
manner. We do so over a range of different speeds, with different manners, and
followingdifferentpatternsthataredependentonthetaskathandandthewayitis
performed.Beyondself-motion,wewalkinordertohavealookaround,surveying
our surroundings as we navigate, and generating a great deal of multisensory
information about the world. The act of locomotion is intimately tied to the ways
that we perceive the ambient spaces and ground surfaces that we traverse. Stable
and efficient locomotion is itself known to require the gathering of information
aboutthegroundservingassupport,andalargeamountofsensoryinformationis
likely to be available for this purpose.
Apedestrianreceivesvisualinformationviatheeyes,soundinformationviathe
auditorychannel,hapticinformationviathesenseoftouch,andinformationabout
movementsofthemusclesandjointsviatheproprioceptivesense.Thesemultiple
sensory inputs are integrated in the formation of coherent percepts about the
contentsandactivitiesofspaceandthepedestriansownmotioninit.Walkingthus
involves a rangeofhumansensoryandmotorfaculties,andthe neural processing
apparatus that supports them.
When walkers are enabled to navigate within virtual environments, additional
factors come into play, including limitations in the presentation of virtual 3D
scenes, or to the coupling of body movements that change with perspective and
distance.SeveralofthesequestionsareaddressedinPartIofthebook.InChap.1
WallerandHodgsondescribehowspatialknowledgeofone’senvironmentduring
navigation is informed by external (e.g., visual and auditory), internal (e.g., ves-
tibular and proprioception), and cognitive (e.g., attention) sources and the impli-
cations for movement simulation. In Chap. 2 Riecke and Schulte-Pelkum
summarize multimodal effects on the illusion of self-motion (i.e., vection) and
waysinwhichvarioussensoryinputscanbeexploitedtomaximizethisillusionin
themostefficientwaypossible.InChap.3,MultonandOlivierreviewindetailthe
most current literature describing the biomechanical characteristics of walking in
real and virtual environments. In Chap. 4 Fajen explores locomotion from the
ecologicalperspectivebyconsideringone’sperceptionofaffordancesduringtasks
Foreword vii
such as obstacle avoidance and wayfinding. InChap. 5,Ruddle considersthe role
andimportanceofbody-basedcuesduringtranslationalandrotationalmovements
when interactingwithinvirtual environments ofvariousscales (model, small,and
largescale).Finally,inChap.6,Frissenetal.,summarizeacollectionofresearch
focusing on the biomechanics of natural walking, the interactions of propriocep-
tive and vestibular inputs during curvilinear walking, and the characteristics of
unconstrained large-scale walking, all with the intention of illuminating the
development and testing of a unique omnidirectional treadmill (the Cyberwalk).
Technologies for Virtual Walking Experiences
Just aswalking is fundamental toournegotiation ofnatural environments,it is of
increasing relevance to interactions with computational systems. From Star Treks
holodeck,toWilliamGibsonscyberspace,theideathatpeoplecouldmovethrough
virtualenvironments via seamless andnatural-seemingbody movements has long
been a staple of science fiction and futurist thinking. However, the potential of
realizingsuchexperienceswithinreallaboratorysettingshasonlyrecentlybecome
feasible, due to advances in multimodal 3D display technologies, sensing, and
robotic motion simulators. Other contemporary interactive paradigms have
emerged as well, including the superposition or mixing of components of virtual
worlds within real environments, or via novel body-scale human interactive
devices.
PartIIofthisbooksurveysarangeoftechnologicalchallengesthatarisewhen
designingvirtualwalkingexperiences,andsomeofthepredominantsolutionsthat
have emerged in the last few years. In Chap. 7, Steed and Bowman review the
displaysandinteractiondevicesthatcanbeutilizedforvirtualtravel,rangingfrom
desktop to fully immersive visual displays, and hand-held devices to motion
tracking systems. In Chap. 8, Multon describes the most popular methods and
algorithmsusedtoevaluatetheparametersandmainpropertiesofhumanwalking
(e.g., step length, joint angles, or ground reaction forces). In Chap. 9, Iwata pro-
vides an extensive survey of locomotion interfaces, i.e., mechanical devices for
creating artificial sensations of physical walking, categorizing them into four
types: sliding shoes, treadmills, foot-pads, and robotic tiles. In Chap. 11, Whitton
and Peck focus on stepping-driven locomotion techniques (walking-in-place and
real-walking interfaces) which do not include treadmills or other mechanical
devices and are driven by the users’ actual stepping motions to convert those
values into viewpoint movement between frames. In Chap. 10, Bruder and
Steinicke explain how to implement virtual walking in virtual environments, via
differentstrategiesthatallowuserstoactuallymovethroughtherealworld,using
physical displacements that are mapped to motions of the camera in the virtual
environment (VE) in order to support unlimited omnidirectional walking. Lastly,
in Chap. 12, Marchal et al., address the multimodal rendering of walking over
viii Foreword
virtual ground surfaces, and how to model, simulate, and incorporate haptic,
acoustic, and graphic rendering to enable truly multimodal walking experiences.
Applications of Virtual Walking
Beyondthebasicscientificandtechnologicalissuesaddressedinthefirsttwoparts
of the book lies the basic question of why, and for what purposes, it may be
desirable to design interactive experiences of virtual walking. From one stand-
point, this remains a nascent field of research and development, and, as has been
seen in other domains that have emerged on large scales in recent decades (e.g.,
mobile computing), many of the applications that ultimately take hold may be
difficult to foresee from the present, early state of development. Nonetheless, a
numberofbroaddomainsofpotentialapplicationcanbeidentified,relatedtoareas
such as human–computer interaction design, immersive simulation, health care,
and entertainment.
Thus, Part III of the book presents a number of interactive techniques and
application scenarios that have been subjects of recent research. In Chap. 13 of
Part III, Kulpa, Bideau, and Brault describe the implementation of techniques for
allowingathletestointeractviamovementsinvirtualsportssetting,andhowthese
interactions may be useful for understanding sports performance. In Chap. 14,
Suma, Krum, and Bolas describe the use of redirected walking techniques in the
designofimmersivesimulationtrainingenvironments.InChap.15,Kiefer,Rhea,
and Warren review current applications of VR for clinical assessment and reha-
bilitationoflocomotorbehavior.InChap.16,Williamson,Wingrave,andLaViola
present a number of techniques and issues related to using low-cost video game
controllers to design affordances for self-motion in virtual environments. Finally,
in Chap. 17, Visell and Cooperstock review the state of the art and future direc-
tions in human–computer interaction design for computationally augmented floor
surfaces.
It is hoped that this diverse collection, organized under the broad umbrella of
virtual walking, a topic that was essentially unaddressed in the research literature
just two decades ago, may prove interesting for researchers in related fields of
engineering, computing, perception, and the movement sciences, and further, that
the many challenges that remain may suggest interesting directions for future
research.
Yon Visell
Frank Steinicke
Jennifer Campos
Anatole Lécuyer
Contents
Part I Perception
1 Sensory Contributions to Spatial Knowledge of Real
and Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
David Waller and Eric Hodgson
2 Perceptual and Cognitive Factors for Self-Motion Simulation
in Virtual Environments: How Can Self-Motion Illusions
(‘‘Vection’’) Be Utilized?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Bernhard E. Riecke and Jörg Schulte-Pelkum
3 Biomechanics of Walking in Real World: Naturalness
we Wish to Reach in Virtual Reality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Franck Multon and Anne-Hélène Olivier
4 Affordance Perception and the Visual Control of Locomotion . . . 79
Brett R. Fajen
5 The Effect of Translational and Rotational Body-Based
Information on Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Roy A. Ruddle
6 Enabling Unconstrained Omnidirectional Walking Through
Virtual Environments: An Overview
of the CyberWalk Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Ilja Frissen, Jennifer L. Campos, Manish Sreenivasa
and Marc O. Ernst
ix
x Contents
Part II Technologies
7 Displays and Interaction for Virtual Travel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Anthony Steed and Doug A. Bowman
8 Sensing Human Walking: Algorithms and Techniques
for Extracting and Modeling Locomotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Franck Multon
9 Locomotion Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Hiroo Iwata
10 Implementing Walking in Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Gerd Bruder and Frank Steinicke
11 Stepping-Driven Locomotion Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Mary C. Whitton and Tabitha C. Peck
12 Multimodal Rendering of Walking Over Virtual Grounds. . . . . . 263
Maud Marchal, Gabriel Cirio, Yon Visell, Federico Fontana,
Stefania Serafin, Jeremy Cooperstock and Anatole Lécuyer
Part III Applications and Interactive Techniques
13 Displacements in Virtual Reality for Sports
Performance Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Richard Kulpa, Benoit Bideau and Sébastien Brault
14 Redirected Walking in Mixed Reality Training Applications . . . . 319
Evan A. Suma, David M. Krum and Mark Bolas
15 VR-Based Assessment and Rehabilitation
of Functional Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Adam W. Kiefer, Christopher K. Rhea and William H. Warren
16 Full Body Locomotion with Video Game Motion Controllers. . . . 351
Brian Williamson, Chadwick Wingrave and Joseph J. LaViola Jr.
17 Interacting with Augmented Floor Surfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Yon Visell, Severin Smith and Jeremy R. Cooperstock
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401