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User Defined Walking-In-Place Gestures for Intuitive Locomotion in Virtual Reality

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Book cover Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (HCII 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12770))

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Abstract

Locomotion is one of the fundamental interactions in virtual reality (VR). As a simple yet naturalistic way to enable VR locomotion, walking-in-place (WIP) techniques have been actively developed. Even though various WIP gestures have been proposed, they were adopted or designed from the perspective of developers, not the users. This limits the benefits of WIP as unnatural gestures may result in a higher cognitive load to learn and memorize, worse presence, and increased sensory conflict. Therefore, this study elicited natural WIP gestures for forward, sideways, and backward walking directions from users. Twenty participants experienced the movement while wearing the VR headset and elicited the WIP gesture for 8 walking directions. The grouping results showed that Turn body + Stepping-in-place (SIP) and Step one foot + SIP/Rock/Stay were four promising WIP gesture sets for VR locomotion. A comparison between elicited and existing gestures revealed that elicited gestures have the potential to outperform existing gestures due to easier to perform, less fatigue, and higher presence. The generated WIP gesture sets could be used in gesture-based VR applications to provide a better user experience and greater movement options in VR locomotion.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by The Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020R1F1A1048510).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Factors and Ergonomics Lab, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea

    Woojoo Kim & Shuping Xiong

  2. Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Inha University, 100 Inha-ro, Michuhol-gu, Incheon, 22212, Republic of Korea

    Eunsik Shin

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  1. Woojoo Kim
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  3. Shuping Xiong
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Correspondence to Shuping Xiong .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, USA

    Jessie Y. C. Chen

  2. U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, Orlando, FL, USA

    Gino Fragomeni

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Kim, W., Shin, E., Xiong, S. (2021). User Defined Walking-In-Place Gestures for Intuitive Locomotion in Virtual Reality. In: Chen, J.Y.C., Fragomeni, G. (eds) Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12770. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77599-5_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77599-5_14

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