Development of a Synthesis Model for Whole-body Vibrations for Multimodal Vehicle Scene Presentation

人类以多模态的方式感知世界。未来的再现系统必须考虑到这一点，通过解决所有模态，以便使用户沉浸在虚拟环境中。这种系统的主要焦点必须是用户的感知。因此，它是强制性的，为每一个模态的刺激被集成到一个合理的场景。可扩展性错觉是指所呈现的虚拟场景的内容，并且当场景与用户的期望相匹配时被唤起。可解释性的评价与范畴化的知觉过程密切相关。有证据表明，分类受到语言的影响。场景与场景类别（例如，“在鹅卵石路上驾驶”）的预期属性（例如，“摇晃”）匹配得越好，它应该被感知得越合理。基于已知的听觉模态方法，该研究项目旨在开发触觉模态的合成模型，允许从用户对任何具有全身振动的场景的期望创建合理的场景。首先，需要制定一种衡量用户期望的方法。因此，需要分析日常振动，例如发生在车辆中的振动，以获得原型信号模式（正弦信号、调幅信号等）。随后，将这些信号模式呈现给测试对象，并确定最重要的感知相关描述符。然后，必须检查这些描述符是否适合描述全身振动。在下一步中，将检查这些信号描述符的独立性。从感知属性的这个简化向量开始，可以创建合成模型。对于模型的验证和迭代改进，车辆中的真实的场景将如上所述被感知地评估，并与多模态环境中的合成全身振动进行比较。单一模态对感知属性向量的影响将被检查。综合模型将简化触觉虚拟现实的设计。如果足以唤起用户的某些感知属性，则可以极大地简化振动回放系统。所获得的知识也可以通过唤起预期的感知属性来应用于触觉用户界面的优化。

Humans perceive the world a multimodal way. This has to be taken into account by future reproduction systems by addressing all modalities in order to immerse the user in the virtual environment. The main focus in such systems has to be the user's perception. Therefore, it is mandatory that the stimuli presented for each modality are integrated to a plausible scene. The plausibility illusion refers to the content of the presented virtual scene and is evoked when the scene matches the user s expectations. The evaluation of plausibility is closely related to the perceptual process of categorization. There is evidence that categorization is influenced by language. The better a scene matches the expected properties (e.g. "shaky") of a scene category (e.g. "driving on a cobblestone road") the more plausible it should be perceived. Building on a known approach for the auditory modality this research project aims at developing a synthesis model for the tactile modality allowing to create plausible scenes from the user s expectations on any scene with whole-body vibrations. First, a method for measuring user s expectations needs to be developed. Therefore, everyday vibrations, as for example occurring in vehicles, need to be analyzed for prototypical signal patterns (sinusoidal signals, amplitude modulated signals, etc.). Subsequently, these signal patterns are presented to test subjects and the most important perceptually relevant descriptors will be determined. Afterwards, these descriptors have to be examined for their suitability for describing whole-body vibrations. In the next step these signal describing descriptors will be checked for independence. Starting from this reduced vector of perceptual attributes a synthesis model can be created. For the verification and iterative improvement of the model real scenes in vehicles will be perceptually evaluated as described above and compared to synthesized whole-body vibrations in the multimodal context. The influence of the single modalities on the vector of perceptual attributes is going to be examined. The synthesis model would simplify the design of tactile virtual realities. If it is sufficient to evoke certain perceptual attributes on the user the vibratory playback system might be greatly simplified. The acquired knowledge could also be applied for the optimization of tactile user interfaces by evoking expected perceptual attributes.