Intelligent Cruise-Control Navigation: A new navigation/travel method for use in virtual environments

Abstract

An important feature of virtual reality is the facility for the user to move around a virtual environment in a natural and easily controlled manner. Navigation, also called locomotion, travel or motion, involves changing the perspective of the user in the virtual environment (VE). It allows the user to move in the VE as well as reorient themselves to look at the world differently. Natural locomotion methods are able to contribute to a sense of presence and reality. The illusion of presence can be lost through unnatural experiences during travel in the VE. This can be caused by poor interactive metaphors or by experiences which do not agree with the user's everyday understanding of the real world. This paper focuses on the navigation method in the VE, one of the major interfaces for the interactivity between human and VE in virtual reality circumstances and worlds. It proposes a new navigation method. Intelligent Cruise-Control Navigation (ICCN), which provides a natural and user-centred approach to navigation in the VE and can improve the user's sense of reality and presence. ICCN is composed of three major phases: Constant Velocity Navigation, Collision Detection and Avoidance, and Path Adjustment. The ICCN can reduce the user's fatigue and improve the user's presence in the VE. The small experimental study reported in this paper suggests that the ICCN will be a natural, straightforward, and useful navigation interface in VE.