Fall.Winter 95 - HITL Home - University of Washington

More documents

Recommendations

Info

HumanFactors/InterfaceAFOSRThe last six months have been very productive for the Air Force Office of ScientificResearch contract team. We are especially proud of Gina Crvarich’s graduation andGlenna Satalich’s thesis. Ryoko Williamson, Mark Draper, Don Parker, Homer Pryorand Bob Futamura continue their AFOSR research experiments; and special updatesfrom two other AFOSR researchers Jerry Prothero and Hunter Hoffman follow.Tactile AugmentationVR systems create a compellingillusion that one is inside a computersimulatedenvironment. Presence, thesensation of being “in a place” whenimmersed in a virtual world, has beendescribed as the “essence” of VR. Byincreasing presence, one increases theamount of information participants canprocess and recall from a virtualexperience, and thus improving presenceis an important human factorsresearch goal.This goal is made easier in that VRallows multimodal representations ofobjects. Presenting converging evidenceto the brain from both visual andauditory input has been found toincrease presence. In the real world,tactile cues are largely processedwithout our awareness, yet they make acritical contribution to our sense of selfand to our construction of reality.Touching a virtual object would likelyevoke an even more compellingexperience of presence in VR.HITLab researcher Hunter Hoffman istesting this idea with assistance fromcolleagues Joris Groen, Bill Winn,Tom Furness, Scott Rousseau, MaxWells, Ari Hollander, and cyberartistBoris Kogon. Hoffman’s test involvesa hand position sensor which controlsthe movements of a disembodiedcyberhand in a virtual environment. Inone test, a user sees and attempts totouch a 3D virtual image of a ball withtheir cyberhand. In another test, theuser sees a virtual ball image, but is alsoable to physically touch the virtual ball.HITLab researcher Juli Yamashita demonstrating the “see and touch” condition. Photo thispage and next by Mary Levin.This tactile feedback is achieved byplacing a real rubber ball within theuser’s grasp at the location of thevirtual object (see photo). As the user’svirtual hand explores the illusory ballin cyberspace, his/her real handexplores the shape of the real ball. This“tactile augmentation” techniqueinvolves using input from real objectsto dramatically enhance a subject’ssense of presence in the virtual world.With a good match between what a usersees and feels in the virtual and realworld (e.g., good alignment andscaling), results demonstrate a significantincrease in presence for the “seeand touch” compared to the “see only”condition. Whether tactile augmentationcan be used to improve situationalawareness and to enhancelearning in VR, is an important topicfor future study.Post-doctoral cognitive psychologist HunterHoffman is a research scientist on the AFOSRand VRRV projects. Contact: (206) 616-1496,hunter@hitl.washington.edu14 RESEARCH AT THE HUMAN INTERFACE TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY
HumanFactors/InterfacePhoto: George SteinmetzForeground/BackgroundManipulations Affect PresenceThere is a trade-off between widefield-of-view (FOV) and high resolutionin immersive HMDs. It isgenerally believed that a wide FOV isnecessary to stimulate a sense ofpresence, of “being in” a virtualenvironment. Since a sense ofpresence is regarded as crucial formany tasks, a difficult choice is oftenmade between increasing HMD FOVor decreasing FOV to allow for betterresolution.In a paper appearing in the 1995Human Factors and ErgonomicsSociety (HFES) Conference Proceedings,HITL researchers JerryProthero, Hunter Hoffman, DonParker, Tom Furness and Max Wellsreport on experiments which suggestit is possible to alter the level ofpresence in a virtual environment at aconstant FOV simply by manipulatinghow the scene boundary is perceived.This research resulted from the ideathat presence is an illusion of perceivedself-position and as such isclosely related to vection (the illusionof perceived self-motion caused byvisual stimuli). If presence andvection are closely related, one wouldexpect to be able to take results fromthe vection literature and apply themto manipulating levels of presence.Vection research has indicated thatone’s perceived motion is heavilyinfluenced by the relative motionbetween one’s self and what oneperceives to be the background (evenif it is the background which isactually moving). Providing a screenwith a wide FOV is one way toencourage users to interpret the sceneas background, and thus to feelvection. Another approach, at givenFOV, is to put the boundary of thescene in front of the scene content. Inthis way, the user may unconsciouslybelieve that the scene is much largerthan it is, meaning that it may beinterpreted as background (and thereforeinduce vection).In the experiments reported on in theHFES paper, it was shown that thesame trick can be used to induce ahigher sense of presence at a givenFOV, comparing a foreground occlusion(tanning goggles - see image ofProthero above) with a paper occlusiondirectly on the HMD screen.Possible applications are increasingpresence in HMDs by obscuring thescreen boundary with a foregroundocclusion, or decreasing presence(which may reduce simulator sickness)by putting the screen boundaryin the background and emphasizing it.For more information contact:Jerry Prothero, (206) 616-1470prothero@hitl.washington.eduRESEARCH AT THE HUMAN INTERFACE TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY 15
Page 2: Director’sBriefContentsGreetings,
Page 6 and 7: MedicineIllustration by Kathryn Bes
Page 8 and 9: EducationVRRV NewsOriginally concei
Page 10 and 11: ManufacturingMOVER ProjectAfter sev
Page 12: SoftwareThe last six months have be
Page 17 and 18: ConsortiumNew MembersWe are proud t
Page 19 and 20: SpecialThanksKudos to Rick Rutkowsk
Page 21 and 22: FarewellPaul Danset, the HITLab’s
Page 23 and 24: Knowledge Base Order FormThe follow

Fall.Winter 95 - HITL Home - University of Washington

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?