Immersive Virtual Research Articles

Scene Perception, Gaze Behavior, and Perceptual Learning in Virtual Environments

More and more immersive environments are developed to provide support for learning or training purposes. Ecological validity of such environments is usually based on learning performance comparisons between virtual environments and their genuine counterparts. Little is known about learning processes occurring in immersive environments. A new technique is proposed for testing perceptual learning during virtual immersion. This methodology relies upon eye-tracking technologies to analyze gaze behavior recorded in relation to virtual objects' features and tasks' requirements. It is proposed that perceptual learning mechanisms engaged could be detected through eye movements. In this study, nine subjects performed perceptual learning tasks in virtual immersion. Results obtained indicated that perceptual learning influences gaze behavior dynamics. More precisely, analysis revealed that fixation number and variability in fixation duration varied with perceptual learning level. Such findings could contribute in shedding light on learning mechanisms as well as providing additional support for validating virtual learning environments.

Eye-tracking in immersive environments: a general methodology to analyze affordance-based interactions from oculomotor dynamics.

This paper aims at presenting a new methodology to study how perceptual and motor processes organized themselves in order to achieve invariant visual information picking-up in virtual immersions. From a head-mounted display, head and eye movements were recorded using tracking devices (magnetic and infrared) that render the six degrees-of-freedom associated with the position and orientation of head movements, and two degrees-of-freedom from one eye. We measured the continuous line of sight's deviation from a pre-selected area on a virtual stimulus. Some preliminary analyses of the dynamical properties of the emergent perceptual and motor patterns are presented as they are considered to be representative of the process of affordance extraction.

Towards an Immersive Intelligence

This essay is an investigation into the immersive cultural consciousness that emerges from an immersive “optic” central to virtual reality. There seems to be a correlation between immersive ideals and desires for extrasensory, distributed disembodiment, meaning a loss of cognitive body-image involving the expansion of boundaries. Immersive art fulfills the prosthetic task of artificially facilitating such an unrestricted state. The desire to exist in an anti-mechanistic state of expansion is temporarily and symbolically realized in engaging immersive art. In virtual immersion, conventional optic models may be surpassed.

Bio‐Inspired Control of an Arm Exoskeleton Joint with Active‐Compliant Actuation System

This paper presents the methodology followed on the design of a multi‐contact point haptic interface that uses a bio‐inspired control approach and a novel actuation system. The combination of these components aims at creating a system that increases the operability of the target, and, at the same time, enables an intuitive and safe tele‐operation of any complex robotic system of any given morphology. The novelty lies on the combination of a thoughtful kinematic structure driven by an active‐compliant actuation system and a bio‐inspired paradigm for its regulation. Due to the proposed actuation approach, the final system will achieve the condition of wearable system. On that final solution, each joint will be able to change its stiffness depending on the task to be executed, and on the anatomical features of each individual. Moreover, the system provides a variety of safety mechanisms at different levels to prevent causing any harm to the operator. In future, the system should allow the complete virtual immersion of the user within the working scenario.

Knowledge Building by Full Integration With Virtual Reality Environments and Its Effects on Personal and Social Life

It is primordial to insist on a continuous education that is open, flexible, and personalized, allowing the individual to update and make his or her knowledge adequate throughout life. The creation of distributed environments for constructivist learning is a challenge. Research in this field is needed for the development of cooperative learning tools able to facilitate and motivate learning. The development of intelligent didactic systems is complex, demanding the support of knowledge coming from different fields. That is why to develop this class of systems a multidisciplinary team is needed, including pedagogues; educational psychologists; specialists in the knowledge domain; and technicians in computer graphics, programming, multimedia, virtual reality, project management, and so forth. Virtual immersion introduces new resources for interindividual communications that deal with reality interpretation. The authors outline the beginning of a long journey on how imagination power can be used for the collective creation of worlds able to improve learning.