HCC: Small: Understanding Situational and Individual Factors in Adaptation to Cybersickness

虚拟现实(VR)在未来的工作、教育和娱乐中发挥核心作用的一个障碍是，许多VR用户都会晕车。晕车的症状类似于晕车，通常包括恶心、出汗、头晕、头痛和眼睛疲劳。根据VR体验的细节，超过一半的VR用户在暴露后10分钟内就会晕车。如此高的晕机率将限制VR及其许多应用的可及性，特别是对最易受影响的人来说。然而，随着时间的推移，人们可以通过反复使用VR来适应，以减少晕车症状。例如，容易晕车的人可能会体验到VR应用程序(例如，娱乐应用程序)，该应用程序会在短时间内使他们轻微地暴露在晕车状态下，这样他们以后就可以体验到VR应用程序(例如，工作培训应用程序)而不会感到恶心。但问题依然存在。需要多大程度的适应？人们要病到什么程度才能适应呢？这根据软件应用程序或人员的不同有何不同？该项目使用为期数天的适应研究来探索理想的情景是否可行，以及存在哪些障碍。这项研究研究人类对晕屏的适应，以开发使适应成为减少晕屏的有用工具的技术。一个目标是了解在一个VR应用中适应晕厥何时以及在多大程度上会在另一个应用中降低晕屏。这种跨应用程序的适应被称为泛化，它将使晕屏适应成为更有用的工具。这项研究将调查适应性的泛化是否取决于在虚拟环境中移动所使用的方法，如真实行走或使用操纵杆。这项研究的另一个目标是了解适应晕车是否需要用户最初经历严重的晕车，或者是否可以使用现有的降低虚拟环境强度的技术来最大限度地减少用户的不适感。最后，这项研究将考察是否所有人都能平等地从适应中受益，或者个人的特征是否会影响适应的速度，以及适应是否会在VR应用中普遍适用。这些研究目标是建立我们关于晕屏适应的知识以及开发现实技术的核心，这些技术将帮助VR设计者将晕屏的不快体验降至最低，并增加VR技术的使用。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。

One barrier to virtual reality (VR) playing a central role in the future of work, education, and entertainment is the fact that many VR users experience cybersickness. Symptoms of cybersickness are similar to those of motion sickness, and often include nausea, sweating, dizziness, headache, and eyestrain. Cybersickness can affect more than half of VR users within just 10 minutes of exposure, depending on details of the VR experience. Such a high rate of cybersickness will limit the accessibility of VR and its many applications, especially for the most susceptible people. However, people can adapt through repeated experiences with VR to reduce cybersickness symptoms over time. For instance, a person who is susceptible to cybersickness could experience a VR application (for example, an entertainment application) that gently exposes them to cybersickness over a short period of time so that they can later experience VR applications (for example, a job training application) without sickness. But questions remain. How much adaptation is needed? How sick do people have to be before they adapt? How does this vary by software application or by person? This project uses multi-day adaptation studies to explore whether the ideal scenario is plausible and what roadblocks exist. This research studies human adaptation to cybersickness to develop techniques that will make adaptation a useful tool to reduce cybersickness. One goal is to learn when and to what extent cybersickness adaptation in one VR application will lead to lower cybersickness in a different application. This carryover of adaptation across applications is referred to as generalization, and it would make cybersickness adaptation a more useful tool. The research will investigate whether generalization of adaptation depends on the method used to move through the virtual environment, such as real walking or using a joystick. Another goal of the research is to learn whether adaptation to cybersickness requires the user to initially experience substantial cybersickness, or whether adaptation can occur while minimizing the user’s discomfort using existing techniques for reducing the intensity of virtual environments. Finally, the research will examine whether all individuals equally benefit from adaptation, or whether characteristics of the person affect the rate of adaptation and whether adaptation generalizes across VR applications. These research goals are central to building our knowledge about cybersickness adaptation as well as developing realistic techniques that will help VR designers minimize the unpleasant experience of cybersickness for users and increase access to VR technology.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.