Poster: Generic Redirected Walking & Dynamic Passive Haptics: Evaluation and Implications for Virtual Locomotion Interfaces

In this paper we introduce concepts for virtual locomotion interfaces that support exploration of large-scale virtual environments (VEs) by real walking. Based on the results of a pilot study we have quantified to which degree users can unknowingly be redirected in order to guide them through an arbitrarily sized VE in which virtual paths differ from the paths tracked in the real working space. We further introduce the concept of dynamic passive haptics which enables a user to interact with a VE. By means of this concept any number of virtual objects can be mapped to real proxy objects having similar haptic properties, i. e., size, shape and surface structure, such that the user can sense these virtual objects by touching their real world counterparts. Thus dynamic passive haptics provides the user with the illusion of interacting with a desired virtual object by redirecting her/him to the corresponding proxy object.