Finding Hidden Objects in Large 3D Environments: The Supermarket Problem

Many everyday tasks involve searching for something,selecting, and manipulating it with some cognitive purpose. Even if it is done in a quite automatic manner, due to our experience to deal with real objects, the mapping of these actions to a virtual world is not trivial.In this paper we present a solution for this problem,which is composed of three parts: a semi-automatic navigation technique based on path-planning; a selection technique comprising the overexposure of nearby objects; and a manipulation technique based on natural gestures. These three techniques were combined in a smooth way to solve the searching, selecting and manipulating problem. A certain degree of parallelism between them was accepted and is handled by the system.We evaluate our results by user testing in a supermarket scenario. Subjects were invited to walk the hallways of a virtual supermarket looking in the shelves for specific products - sometimes hidden by other objects - that they need to pick up and put over a table in a pre-defined position and orientation.Results showed that our solution fulfill the needs of this kind of complex task, in a natural, funny and attractive way.