Promoting Reality Awareness in Virtual Reality through Proxemics

Medeiros, D. , dos Anjos, R., Pantidi, N., Huang, K., Sousa, M., Anslow, C. and Jorge, J. (2021) Promoting Reality Awareness in Virtual Reality through Proxemics. In: 2021 IEEE Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), 27 Mar - 01 Apr 2021, pp. 21-30. ISBN 9781665418386 (doi: 10.1109/VR50410.2021.00022)

Abstract

Head-Mounted Virtual reality (VR) systems provide full-immersive experiences to users and completely isolate them from the outside world, placing them in unsafe situations. Existing research proposed different alert-based solutions to address this. Our work builds on these studies on notification systems for VR environments from a different perspective. We focus on: (i) exploring alert systems to notify VR users about non-immersed bystanders' in socially related, non-critical interaction contexts; (ii) understanding how best to provide awareness of non-immersed bystanders while maintaining presence and immersion within the Virtual Environment(VE). To this end, we developed single and combined alert cues - leveraging proxemics, perception channels, and push/pull approaches and evaluated those via two user studies. Our findings indicate a strong preference towards maintaining immersion and combining audio and visual cues, push and pull notification techniques that evolve dynamically based on proximity.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: This research received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (#835197, ViAjeRo), Entrepreneurial University Program funded by TEC, New Zealand, Royal Society of New Zealand Catalyst Leaders International Leader Fellowship 19-VUW-015-ILF and Fundac¸ ˜ao (FCT) para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal through grant UIDB/50021/2020.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Pires de Sa Medeiros, Dr Daniel
• Authors: Medeiros, D., dos Anjos, R., Pantidi, N., Huang, K., Sousa, M., Anslow, C., and Jorge, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• ISSN: 2642-5246
• ISBN: 9781665418386
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 IEEE
• First Published: First published in 2021 IEEE Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR): 21-30
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

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