Christoph Anthes

ShoeSoleSense: proof of concept for a wearable foot interface for virtual and real environments

ShoeSoleSense is a proof of concept, novel body worn interface - an insole that enables location independent hands-free interaction through the feet. Forgoing hand or finger interaction is especially beneficial when the user is engaged in real world tasks. In virtual environments as moving through safety training applications is often conducted via finger input, which is not very suitable. To enable a more intuitive interaction, alternative control concepts utilize gesture control, which is usually tracked by statically installed cameras in CAVE-like-installations. Since tracking coverage is limited, problems may also occur. The introduced prototype provides a novel control concept for virtual reality as well as real life applications. Demonstrated functions include movement control in a virtual reality installation such as moving straight, turning and jumping. Furthermore the prototype provides additional feedback by heating up the feet and vibrating in dedicated areas on the surface of the insole.

State of the art of virtual reality technology

In the past three years, the so-called second wave of Virtual Reality (VR) has brought us a vast amount of new displays and input devices. Not only new hardware has entered the consumer market providing affordable pricing models but also completely new technologies are being designed and developed. Additionally new concepts for handling existing problems on the hardware and software side of the VR technology are constantly being introduced. This software and hardware development is mainly lead by enthusiasts interested in the domain of VR opposed to the established scientific community, which already partially makes use of the newly available technology. Besides Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), either cable-based or mobile, other devices like haptics devices, controllers, vests, omnidirectional treadmills, tracking technologies, as well as optical scanners for gesture-based interaction are gaining importance in the field of commodity VR. Most of these technologies are already precise and robust enough to be used for professional operation and scientific experiments. The topics discussed are the common issues with the new technologies including the approaches to solve them as for example motion-to-photon latency, barrel distortion, and low-persistence displays. Additionally an in-depth analysis of the available solutions expected to hit the market is provided. A taxonomy categorising the current developments with the chosen implementation approaches will be given. The paper analyses the state of technological advancements in the field and provides an extensive overview on the current development considering the upcoming devices and the advancements from the software side.

inVRs: a framework for building interactive networked virtual reality systems

In the recent years a growing interest in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) can be observed. Users at different locations on the Globe are able to communicate and interact in the same virtual space as if they were in the same physical location. For the implementation of CVEs several approaches exist. General ideas for the design of Virtual Environments (VEs) are analyzed and a novel approach in the form of a highly extensible, flexible, and modular framework – inVRs – is presented.

An adaptive network architecture for close-coupled collaboration in distributed virtual environments

This paper describes a network architecture for large-scale, interactive, distributed 3D environments. Its main goals are the maintenance of low latency during user interaction and fast broadcasting techniques in order to fulfill consistency requirements. The main purpose is supporting close-coupled collaboration within a large virtual environment. Additionally the network topology adapts itself to varying amounts of users and computers connected to the system.

Navigation models for a flexible, multi-mode VR navigation framework

Navigation is a key issue for Virtual Reality (VR) applications because it forms an integral part of the feeling of presence, which should be conveyed by VR applications. This paper presents several VR navigation modes which are useful for orientation and interaction in Virtual Environments (VEs). Due to the existence of different kinds of applications several navigation modes are required.

Tools for collaborative VR application development

This paper introduces a tool set consisting of open source libraries that are being developed to facilitate the quick and easy implementation of collaborative VR applications. It describes functionality that can be used for generating and displaying a Virtual Environment (VE) on varied VR platforms. This is enhanced to provide collaboration support through additional modules such as networking. Two existing VR applications which make use of these tools are described. Both were developed effortlessly over a short period of time, and demonstrate the power of these tools for implementing a diverse range of applications.

Managing transformations and events in networked virtual environments

In the recent years a growing interest in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) can be observed. Most of these systems use event-object driven architectures for consistent and clear communication inside these systems and in between them. Networked Virtual Reality (VR) applications make heavy use of position tracking data and process a vast amount of transformation matrices during their simulation steps. This observation leads to a novel approach on how communication in Networked Virtual Environments (NVEs) could take place by considering events as well as transformation data to allow for higher responsiveness within Virtual Worlds.

Perspectives for using virtual reality to extend visual data mining in information visualization

Although virtual reality (VR) has a huge success in increasing the quality of scientific visualization applications, there is a considerable lag in the development of VR applications in the case of information visualization (InfoVis). Some researchers in InfoVis claim that 2D representations are enough for data analysis; however, in the case of multi-dimensional datasets, other researchers indicate that studying multiple dimensions simultaneously is advantageous [1], [2], [3]. The first studies with low quality stereoscopic devices showed no advantages when performing simple tasks on simple datasets [4]. However, recent experiments using higher quality devices and more complex datasets show a huge improvement in performance [5]. Still, designing an effective 3D representation remains a complex endeavour. Brath [6] provides a list of things to take into account. This paper shows how a CAVE-like2 environment can allow the study of multi-dimensional datasets while keeping multiple 2D representations available, using genome comparisons as a usecase. Parallel coordinate plots and non-planar graph representation in 3D space are also described. Some potential applications in aerospace are also listed (this is by no means a complete listing of applications; readers are encouraged to suggest new ones).

ShoeSoleSense: demonstrating a wearable foot interface for locomotion in virtual environments

User input in a virtual environment (VE) is usually accomplished through simple finger interactions, such as walking in a 3D scene by pressing a button. These interactions are not very suitable for movement in VE. Moving through scenes such as a safety training applications by walking-in-place while forgoing hand or finger input for other purposes enables a more realistic feeling. Already existing solutions, such as multi-directional treadmills, are still expensive and need additional fixation of the body. Others, like using external tracking that are usually accomplished by using statically installed cameras in CAVE-like-installations, also have limitations in terms of occlusion. The built prototype - an insole Directly measures the pressure under the feet and hence enables a detection of movements, which is wirelessly forwarded to the scene manager server.

A toolbox supporting collaboration in networked virtual environments

A growing interest in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) can be observed over the last few years. Geographically dislocated users share a common virtual space as if they were at the same physical location. Although Virtual Reality (VR) is heading more and more in the direction of creating lifelike environments and stimulating all of the users senses the technology does not yet allow communication and interaction as it is in the real world. A more abstract representation is sufficient in most CVEs. This paper provides an overview on tools which can be used to enhance communication and interaction in CVEs by visualising behaviour. Not only is a set of tools presented and classified, an implementation approach on how to use these tools in a structured way in form of a framework is also given.