Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to figure out how to automatically redirect in an optimal manner without imposing
unnatural restrictions on freedom of movement. Automated approaches are a non-
trivial problem, as they would require analyzing the scene structure, predicting the
user's walking path within the virtual and physical spaces, selecting the most appro-
priate technique to employ based on the current state of the user and system, and
gracefully intervening when failure cases are encountered.
Redirection with multiple users
. Small squad training is an notable topic of interest
for the U.S. Army, and the possibility of employing redirected walking with multiple
users is one of the most frequent questions we have received from military personnel.
To the best of our knowledge, research thus far in redirected walking has focused
exclusively on the single user experience. We believe that it is possible to redirect
multiple users within a single virtual environment, but this would also introduce new
challenges when the two users need to interact and their virtual world coordinate
systems do not align well with each other. Thus, redirected walking with multiple
simultaneous users is an important area for future work.
Evaluating impact on training value
. While research thus far has shown promis-
ing results for using redirected walking in virtual environments, the open question
remains whether redirected walking techniques will be compelling and effective
specifically in a training context. Many of the studies conducted by the virtual reality
community tend to draw their subjects from either the general population or univer-
sity students. However, soldiers are a self-selected population with specialized skills
and training, and it seems logical to conclude that their experiences in an immersive
training simulator could be drastically different from those of a randomly selected
person drawn from the general population. Before redirected walking can be transi-
tioned to these practical environments, there is a need to understand the impact that
these techniques will have on learning gains and training outcomes. Thus, domain-
specific evaluation remains an important focus for future studies.
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