The importance of accurate VR head registration on skilled motor performance

ABSTRACT

Many virtual reality (VR) researchers consider exact head registration (HR) and an exact multi-sensory alignment between real world and virtual objects to be a critical factor for effective motor performance in VR. Calibration procedures, however, can be error prone, time consuming and sometimes impractical to perform. To better understand the relationship between head registration and fine motor performance, we conducted a series of reciprocal tapping tasks under four conditions: real world tapping, VR with correct HR, VR with mildly perturbed HR, and VR with highly perturbed HR. As might be expected, VR performance was worse than real world performance. There was no effect of HR perturbation on motor performance in the tapping tasks. We believe that sensorimotor adaptation enabled subjects to perform equally well in the three VR conditions despite the incorrect head registration in two of the conditions. This suggests that exact head registration may not be as critically important as previously thought, and that extensive per-user calibration procedures may not be necessary for some VR tasks.

REFERENCES

• 1: Roland Arsenault , Colin Ware, Eye-hand co-ordination with force feedback, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.408-414, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/332040.332466]
• 2: Ronald Azuma. Course notes on "registration" from course notes #30: Making direct manipulation work in virtual reality. SIGGRAPH '97: Proceedings of the 24th annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, 1997. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/sig97reg.pdf.
• 3: Ronald Azuma , Gary Bishop, Improving static and dynamic registration in an optical see-through HMD, Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.197-204, July 1994 [doi>10.1145/192161.192199]
• 4: Woodrow Barfield , Thomas A. Furness, III, Virtual environments and advanced interface design, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, NY, 1995
• 5: Jacob Cohen. Statisical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition, pages 273--288. 1977.
• 6: Mary Czerwinski , Desney S. Tan , George G. Robertson, Women take a wider view, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503412]
• 7: Michael Deering, High resolution virtual reality, Proceedings of the 19th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.195-202, July 1992
• 8: Robert G. Eggleston. William P. Janson, and Kenneth A. Aldrich. Field of view effects on a direct manipulation task in a virtual environment. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 41st Annual Meeting, pages 1244--1248, 1997.
• 9: Steven R. Ellis, Mitchell Tyler, Won S. Kim, and Lawrence Stark. Three-dimensional tracking with misalignment between display and control axes. SAE Transactions: Journal of Aerospace, 100(1):985--989, 1991.
• 10: Paul M. Fitts. The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47:381--391, 1954.
• 11: Paul M. Fitts and James R. Peterson. Information capacity of discrete motor responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67:103--112, 1964.
• 12: Joris Groen and Peter J. Werkhoven. Visuomotor adaptation to virtual hand position in interactive virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(5):429--446, 1998.
• 13: Richard Held. Plasticity in sensory-motor systems. Scientific American, 213(5):84--94, 1965.
• 14: Helen H. Hu , Amy A. Gooch , Sarah H. Creem-Regehr , William B. Thompson, Visual cues for perceiving distances from objects to surfaces, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.11 n.6, p.652-664, December 2002 [doi>10.1162/105474602321050758]
• 15: Kaiser Electro-Optics Inc. ProView XL35 & XL50, 2006. http://www.rockwellcollins.com/optronics/ProductsAndServices/DisplayProducts/HeadMountedDisplays/ProViewXL50/pages738.html.
• 16: Katerina Mania , Bernard D. Adelstein , Stephen R. Ellis , Michael I. Hill, Perceptual sensitivity to head tracking latency in virtual environments with varying degrees of scene complexity, Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization, August 07-08, 2004, Los Angeles, California [doi>10.1145/1012551.1012559]
• 17: Robert Patterson and Wayne L. Martin. Human stereopsis. Human Factors, 34(6):669--692, 1992.
• 18: Polhemus. Polhemus Fastrak (magnetic motion capture equipment), 2005. http://www.polhemus.com.
• 19: Gordon M. Redding and Benjamin Wallace. Effects of movement duration and visual feedback on visual and proprioceptive components of prism adaptation. Journal of Motor Behavior, 26(3):257--266, 1994.
• 20: J. P. Rolland , F. A. Biocca , T. Barlow , A. Kancherla, Quantification of adaptation to virtual-eye location in see-thru head-mounted displays, Proceedings of the Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium (VRAIS'95), p.56, March 11-15, 1995
• 21: W. W. Somers and M. J. Hamilton. Estimation of the stereoscopic threshold utilizing perceived depth. Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics, 4(3):245--250, 1984.
• 22: R. William Soukoreff , I. Scott MacKenzie, Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation, perspectives on 27 years of Fitts' law research in HCI, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.61 n.6, p.751-789, December 2004 [doi>10.1016/j.ijhcs.2004.09.001]
• 23: David Sprague. The importance of accurate head registration for fine motor performance in VR. Master's thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of British Columbia, 2006.
• 24: Alexander Stevenson. Calibrating head-coupled virtual reality systems. Master's thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of British Columbia, 2002.
• 25: Valerie A. Summers , Kellogg S. Booth , Tom Calvert , Evan Graham , Christine L. MacKenzie, Calibration for augmented reality experimental testbeds, Proceedings of the 1999 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics, p.155-162, April 26-29, 1999, Atlanta, Georgia, United States [doi>10.1145/300523.300544]
• 26: Yanqing Wang , Christine L. MacKenzie, Object manipulation in virtual environments: relative size matters, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.48-55, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.302989]
• 27: Yanqing Wang , Christine L. MacKenzie, The role of contextual haptic and visual constraints on object manipulation in virtual environments, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.532-539, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/332040.332494]
• 28: Colin Ware , Roland Arsenault, Frames of reference in virtual object rotation, Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization, August 07-08, 2004, Los Angeles, California [doi>10.1145/1012551.1012576]
• 29: Colin Ware , Ravin Balakrishnan, Reaching for objects in VR displays: lag and frame rate, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.1 n.4, p.331-356, Dec. 1994 [doi>10.1145/198425.198426]
• 30: Colin Ware , Jeff Rose, Rotating virtual objects with real handles, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.6 n.2, p.162-180, June 1999 [doi>10.1145/319091.319102]
• 31: Peter Willemsen , Mark B. Colton , Sarah H. Creem-Regehr , William B. Thompson, The effects of head-mounted display mechanics on distance judgments in virtual environments, Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization, August 07-08, 2004, Los Angeles, California [doi>10.1145/1012551.1012558]
• 32: Yasuyoshi Yokokohji, Ralph L. Hollis, and Takeo Kanade. WYSIWYF display: a visual/haptic interface to virtual environment. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 8(4):412--434, 1999.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human information processing

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

Keywords:
calibration, head registration, motor ability, sensorimotor adaptation, tapping tasks, virtual reality