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Stepping-Driven Locomotion Interfaces

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Human Walking in Virtual Environments

Abstract

Walking-in-place and real-walking locomotion interfaces for virtual environment systems are interfaces that are driven by the user’s actual stepping motions and do not include treadmills or other mechanical devices. While both walking-in-place and real-walking interfaces compute the user’s speed and direction and convert those values into viewpoint movement between frames, they differ in how they enable the user to move to any distant location in very large virtual scenes. Walking-in-place constrains the user’s actual movement to a small area and translates stepping-in-place motions into viewpoint movement. Real-walking applies one of several techniques to transform the virtual scene so that the user’s physical path stays within the available laboratory space. This chapter discusses implementations of these two types of interfaces with particular regard to how walking-in-place interfaces generate smooth motion and how real-walking interfaces modify the user’s view of the scene so deviations from her real motion are less detectable.

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Acknowledgments

Whitton’s work on this chapter was supported in part by the NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and the Renaissance Computing Institute, and Peck’s in part by the European grant VERE, an Integrated Project funded under the European Seventh Framework Program. We both thank our colleagues whose work is reported here for the pleasure and stimulation of working with them on this topic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Mary C. Whitton

  2. Event Lab, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Tabitha C. Peck

Authors
  1. Mary C. Whitton
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  2. Tabitha C. Peck
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Correspondence to Mary C. Whitton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Würzburg, Oswald-Külpe-Weg 82, Würzburg, 97074, Germany

    Frank Steinicke

  2. Drexel University, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineerin, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Yon Visell

  3. University of Toronto,  Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Univ, University Ave 550, Toronto, M5G 2A2, Ontario, Canada

    Jennifer Campos

  4. Computer Science and Control (INRIA), National Institute for Research in, Campus de Beaulie, Rennes Cedex, 35042, France

    Anatole Lécuyer

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Whitton, M.C., Peck, T.C. (2013). Stepping-Driven Locomotion Interfaces. In: Steinicke, F., Visell, Y., Campos, J., Lécuyer, A. (eds) Human Walking in Virtual Environments. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8432-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8432-6_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-8431-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8432-6

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