Design and evaluation of a wind display for virtual reality

ABSTRACT

One of the goals in the design of virtual environments (VE) is to give the user the feeling of existence within the VE, known as presence. Employing multimodality is one way to increase presence, and as such, numerous multimodal input and output devices have been used in the context of virtual reality (VR). However, the simulation and investigation into the effects of the wind (or air flow) has not been treated much in the VR research community. In this paper, we introduce a wind display system, called the "WindCube," designed for virtual reality applications. The WindCube consists of a number of small fans attached to a cubical structure in which a VR system user interacts with the VE. We first discuss the design parameters of the proposed display device such as the type of the fan used, and the appropriate number, locations and directions of the fans in relation to providing the minimum level of the wind effects and enhanced presence. In order to simulate the effects of the wind, a wind field is first specified within the virtual environment. We describe how the specified wind field is rendered to the user through the proposed device. Finally, we investigate the effects of the proposed wind display to user felt presence through an experiment. It is our belief that wind display is very important and cost effective modality to consider and employ, because it involves "air," a medium that makes the VE felt more "livable," in contrast to many VE's that looks vaccum.

REFERENCES

• 1: ATMEL, Online Corporate Homepage available at: <u>http://www.atmel.com/</u>
• 2: K. Bystrom, W. Barfield, and C. Hendrix, "A Conceptual Model of the Sense of Presence in Virtual Environments," Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, MIT, 8(2), pp. 241--244, 1999
• 3: Richard A. Bolt, “Put-that-there”: Voice and gesture at the graphics interface, Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.262-270, July 14-18, 1980, Seattle, Washington, United States
• 4: S. Bryson and C. Levit, "The Virtual Wind Tunnel", Proc. of IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, 1992
• 5: A Map-Based System Using Speech and 3D Gestures for Pervasive Computing, Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, p.191, October 14-16, 2002 [doi>10.1109/ICMI.2002.1166991]
• 6: Huong Q. Dinh , Neff Walker , Chang Song , Akira Kobayashi , Larry F. Hodges, Evaluating the Importance of Multi-sensory Input on Memory and the Sense of Presence in Virtual Environments, Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality, p.222, March 13-17, 1999
• 7: Michael A. Grasso , David S. Ebert , Timothy W. Finin, The integrality of speech in multimodal interfaces, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.5 n.4, p.303-325, Dec. 1998 [doi>10.1145/300520.300521]
• 8: M. Heilig, Morton, "Sensorama," U.S. Patent #3,050,870, 1961
• 9: Carrie Heeter, Being there: the subjective experience of presence, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.1 n.2, p.262-271, Spring 1992
• 10: W. Ijsselsteijn, H. de Ridder, J. Freeman, and S. Avons, "Presence: Concept, Determinants and Measurement," Proceedings of the SPIE, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging V, 3959--76, 2000
• 11: Hiroo Iwata , Hiroaki Yano , Takahiro Uemura , Tetsuro Moriya, Food Simulator: A Haptic Interface for Biting, Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2004 (VR'04), p.51, March 27-31, 2004 [doi>10.1109/VR.2004.40]
• 12: Y. Jang, U. Yang, and G. J. Kim, "POS.T.Wear: Vibrotactile Interface Design for Near-body Space Interaction in VR-based Motion Training System," Int. Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (ICAT), pp. 4--9, 2002
• 13: P. Kammermeier, M. Buss, and G. Schmidt, "A Systems Theoretical for Human Perception in Multimodal Presence Systems," Transactions on IEEE/ASME Mechatronics, 6(3), pp. 234--244, 2001
• 14: LDS, On-line document available at: <u>http://www.lightdesignsystems.com/fans.html</u>
• 15: Mark R. Mine , Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. , Carlo H. Sequin, Moving objects in space: exploiting proprioception in virtual-environment interaction, Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.19-26, August 1997 [doi>10.1145/258734.258747]
• 16: N. Mitsutake, K. Hoshiai, H. Igarashi, Y. Sugioka, Y. Yamamoto, K. Yamazaki, A. Yoshida, and T. Yamaguchi, "Open sesame from top of your head-an event related potential based interface for the control of the virtual reality system," Proc. of 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Communication, pp. 292--295, 1993
• 17: NASD, "A Wind Tunnel Model to Predict Exposure of Humans and the Environment to Pesticide Drift", On-line article at: <u>http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001301-d001400/d001368/d001368.html</u>
• 18: Tetsuro Ogi , Michitaka Hirose, Multisensory Data Sensualization based on Human Perception, Proceedings of the 1996 Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium (VRAIS 96), p.66, March 30-April 03, 1996
• 19: P. Richard, G. Burdea, D. Gomez, and P. Coiffet, "A Comparison of Haptic, Visual and Auditive Force Feedback for Deformable Virtual Objects," Proc. of ICAT 94 Conference, pp. 49--62, 1994
• 20: Eva-Lotta Sallnäs , Kirsten Rassmus-Gröhn , Calle Sjöström, Supporting presence in collaborative environments by haptic force feedback, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.7 n.4, p.461-476, Dec. 2000 [doi>10.1145/365058.365086]
• 21: Thomas B. Sheridan, Musings on telepresence and virtual presence, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.1 n.1, p.120-126, Winter 1992
• 22: M. Slater and M. Usoh, "Presence in Immersive Virtual Environments," Proc. of IEEE VRAIS, pp. 90--96, 1993.
• 23: Mel Slater , Martin Usoh , Anthony Steed, Taking steps: the influence of a walking technique on presence in virtual reality, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.2 n.3, p.201-219, Sept. 1995 [doi>10.1145/210079.210084]
• 24: R. Weinstein, "Simulation and Visualization of Air Flow Around Chiroptera Wings During Flight," Honors Thesis, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2002
• 25: Jakub Wejchert , David Haumann, Animation aerodynamics, Proceedings of the 18th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.19-22, July 1991
• 26: B. Witmer and M. Singer, "Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire", Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Vol. 7, pp. 225--240, 1998
• 27: Yasuyuki Yanagida , Shinjiro Kawato , Haruo Noma , Akira Tomono , Nobuji Tetsutani, Projection-Based Olfactory Display with Nose Tracking, Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2004 (VR'04), p.43, March 27-31, 2004 [doi>10.1109/VR.2004.62]
• 28: Ungyeon Yang , Gerard Jounghyun Kim, Increasing the Effective Egocentric Field of View with Proprioceptive and Tactile Feedback, Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2004 (VR'04), p.27, March 27-31, 2004 [doi>10.1109/VR.2004.44]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.3 Picture/Image Generation

General Terms:
Experimentation, Verification

Keywords:
air flow, interface, presence, simulation, virtual environments, wind