CS&E Colloquium: User Redirection and Alignment for Virtual Reality Experiences in Arbitrary Physical Spaces

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This week's speaker, Jerald Thomas (University of Minnesota), will be giving a talk titled "User Redirection and Alignment for Virtual Reality Experiences in Arbitrary Physical Spaces."

Abstract

One of the most formidable challenges virtual reality researchers currently face is how to have the user effectively navigate the virtual environment. Natural locomotion, or walking, has been shown to have several benefits compared to other navigation techniques, but is restricted by the physical environment size and layout. Redirected walking is a technique that enables natural locomotion within a virtual environment that is larger than the available physical space by introducing unnoticeable discrepancies between the user's physical and virtual movements. However, it relies on physical environments that are convex (typically rectangular), free of obstacles, and static. These requirements are restrictive and not representative of real world environments. Additionally, redirected walking does not generally allow for user interactions with the physical environment, which has been shown to improve the user’s experience. These limitations ultimately mean that redirected walking based experiences cannot take full advantage of most real world physical environments. In this talk I will introduce my dissertation research in which I use techniques from the field of robotics to address these limitations.

Biography

Jerald Thomas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. His doctoral research involves exploring novel methods and uses for redirected walking, much of which is inspired by robotics. Jerald received his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth under the advisement of Dr. Stan Burns and his M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Southern California under the advisement of Dr. Evan Suma Rosenberg. He is currently on track to defend his dissertation this December, and afterwards he will begin a two year Computing Innovation Fellowship post-doc at Virginia Tech. His research interests include Virtual and Augmented Reality, Redirected Walking, Human Computer Interaction, and Collaborative Virtual Environments.