CHS: Small: A Spatial Cognitive Framework For Personalizing Locomotion in Virtual Environments

低成本头盔显示器的出现使消费者能够负担得起虚拟现实，目前全球有数百万虚拟现实用户。探索虚拟环境最自然的方式是行走和转弯，就像探索真实环境一样。然而，许多虚拟现实系统缺乏允许物理行走的必要技术，而那些允许物理行走的系统只提供有限的行走空间。因此，虚拟现实用户必须依靠导航界面来充分探索虚拟环境。也许最常见的技术是远程端口接口，在该接口中，用户将虚拟激光指示器指向虚拟环境中所需的位置，然后被直接传送到该位置。远程传送界面很容易学习，但缺乏通常与行走相关的基于身体的提示，如腿部运动和平衡感，这可能会导致快速失去方向感。该项目的目标是评估远程端口接口对导航的影响，并确定帮助用户在使用远程端口接口时保持定向的方法。对于某些用户，例如空间能力较低的用户，远程传送可能会特别迷失方向，因此该项目结合了一种个性化的方法来确定应该向给定用户提供的自适应导航支持的数量和类型。这个项目的发现将支持虚拟环境设计(DOVE)网站的创建，这是一个公共维基百科风格的网站，提供基于虚拟现实研究的研究指南，以及支持本科生和研究生教育的材料，以及扩展旨在扩大计算参与的项目。该项目使用了一个新的框架，基于通过虚拟环境(VE)的运动和用户身体运动之间的协调/不协调。在这一框架内，本项目评估了三种常见的导航界面(行走、传送以改变位置、以及传送以改变位置和方向)和几种类型的环境线索对用户执行两项基本导航任务的能力的影响。第一个任务是空间更新，包括在空间中移动时跟踪自己的位置和方向，回答这个问题：“我在哪里？”定向障碍代表着空间更新的失败。准确的空间更新对于VE的成功至关重要，特别是在时间敏感的领域，如远程医疗援助和极端工作场所环境的培训。第二个任务，认知地图的形成，涉及将经验的位置和它们之间的关系存储在记忆中，对于涉及导航到记忆中的位置或选择替代路线或捷径的任务至关重要，例如，“我如何到达那里？”一系列实验的结果将被用来为导航界面和辅助设备提供循证建议，VR设计师应该统一地或使用基于用户空间能力或其他个人差异的自适应个性化方法，将这些导航接口和辅助设备纳入VE。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The availability of low-cost head-mounted displays has made virtual reality affordable to consumers and there are now millions of virtual reality users worldwide. The most natural way to explore a virtual environment is to walk and turn, just as one does when exploring a real environment. However, many virtual reality systems lack necessary technology to allow physical walking, and those that do allow physical walking provide only limited walking space. Therefore, virtual reality users must rely on navigation interfaces to fully explore the virtual environment. Perhaps the most common technique is the teleport interface, in which the user points a virtual laser pointer to the desired location in the virtual environment and is then directly transported to that location. The teleport interface is easy to learn but lacks body-based cues normally associated with walking, such as leg movement and sense of balance, which can cause rapid disorientation. This project's goals are to evaluate the effects of the teleport interface on navigation and to identify ways to help users stay oriented when using the teleport interface. Teleporting is likely to be especially disorienting for some users, such as those with low spatial ability, so this project incorporates a personalized approach to determine the amount of and type of adaptive navigation support that should be provided to a given user. Findings from this project will support creation of the Design of Virtual Environments (DOVE) website, a public Wikipedia-style site for research-based guidelines from virtual reality research, along with materials to support both undergraduate and graduate education and outreach to programs targeted at broadening participation in computing.This project uses a novel framework based on concordance/discordance between movement through a virtual environment (VE) and movement of the user's body. Within this framework, this project evaluates the impact of three common navigation interfaces (walking, teleporting to change position, and teleporting to change position and orientation) and several types of environmental cues on users' ability to perform two fundamental navigation tasks. The first task, spatial updating, involves keeping track of self-location and orientation when moving through space, answering the question, "Where am I?" Disorientation represents a failure of spatial updating. Accurate spatial updating is critical for a successful VE, particularly in time-sensitive domains such as remote medical assistance and training for extreme workplace circumstances. The second task, cognitive map formation, involves storing experienced locations and relationships between them in memory, and is critical for tasks that involve navigation to remembered locations or selection of alternative routes or shortcuts, e.g., "How do I get there?" The results from a series of experiments will be used to make evidence-based recommendations for navigation interfaces and aids that VR designers should ideally include in a VE, either uniformly or using an adaptive personalized approach based on users' spatial abilities or other individual differences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.