Alexis P. Chambers

Nikunj Arora, Markku Suomalainen, Matti Pouke et al.

We propose augmenting immersive telepresence by adding a virtual body, representing the user's own arm motions, as realized through a head-mounted display and a 360-degree camera. Previous research has shown the effectiveness of having a virtual body in simulated environments; however, research on whether seeing one's own virtual arms increases presence or preference for the user in an immersive telepresence setup is limited. We conducted a study where a host introduced a research lab while participants wore a head-mounted display which allowed them to be telepresent at the host's physical location via a 360-degree camera, either with or without a virtual body. We first conducted a pilot study of 20 participants, followed by a pre-registered 62 participant confirmatory study. Whereas the pilot study showed greater presence and preference when the virtual body was present, the confirmatory study failed to replicate these results, with only behavioral measures suggesting an increase in presence. After analyzing the qualitative data and modeling interactions, we suspect that the quality and style of the virtual arms, and the contrast between animation and video, led to individual differences in reactions to the virtual body which subsequently moderated feelings of presence.

Markku Suomalainen, Basak Sakcak, Adhi Widagdo et al.

We propose unwinding the rotations experienced by the user of an immersive telepresence robot to improve comfort and reduce VR sickness of the user. By immersive telepresence we refer to a situation where a 360\textdegree~camera on top of a mobile robot is streaming video and audio into a head-mounted display worn by a remote user possibly far away. Thus, it enables the user to be present at the robot's location, look around by turning the head and communicate with people near the robot. By unwinding the rotations of the camera frame, the user's viewpoint is not changed when the robot rotates. The user can change her viewpoint only by physically rotating in her local setting; as visual rotation without the corresponding vestibular stimulation is a major source of VR sickness, physical rotation by the user is expected to reduce VR sickness. We implemented unwinding the rotations for a simulated robot traversing a virtual environment and ran a user study (N=34) comparing unwinding rotations to user's viewpoint turning when the robot turns. Our results show that the users found unwound rotations more preferable and comfortable and that it reduced their level of VR sickness. We also present further results about the users' path integration capabilities, viewing directions, and subjective observations of the robot's speed and distances to simulated people and objects.

Matti Pouke, Katherine J. Mimnaugh, Alexis Chambers et al.

This paper identifies and confirms a perceptual phenomenon: when users interact with simulated objects in a virtual environment where the users' scale deviates greatly from normal, there is a mismatch between the object physics they consider realistic and the object physics that would be correct at that scale. We report the findings of two studies investigating the relationship between perceived realism and a physically accurate approximation of reality in a virtual reality experience in which the user has been scaled by a factor of ten. Study 1 investigated perception of physics when scaled-down by a factor of ten, whereas Study 2 focused on enlargement by a similar amount. Studies were carried out as within-subjects experiments in which a total of 84 subjects performed simple interaction tasks with objects under two different physics simulation conditions. In the true physics condition, the objects, when dropped and thrown, behaved accurately according to the physics that would be correct at that either reduced or enlarged scale in the real world. In the movie physics condition, the objects behaved in a similar manner as they would if no scaling of the user had occurred. We found that a significant majority of the users considered the movie physics condition to be the more realistic one. However, at enlarged scale, many users considered true physics to match their expectations even if they ultimately believed movie physics to be the realistic condition. We argue that our findings have implications for many virtual reality and telepresence applications involving operation with simulated or physical objects in abnormal and especially small scales.