
Position:
Associate Professor
Contact:
ber1 at sfu dot ca
http://www.siat.sfu.ca/faculty/Bernhard-Riecke/
Affiliations:
Assistant Professor at SFU-SIAT (School of Interactive Arts and Technology)
Associate Member of SFU Cognitive Science Program
Biography
Positions and Affiliations:
- Associate Professor at SFU-SIAT (School of Interactive Arts and Technology)
- Associate Member of SFU Cognitive Science Program
Contact:
ber1 at sfu dot ca
SIAT homepage:
Brief Biography
I am a psycho-physicist and Cognitive Scientist who’s excited about studying how humans orient in virtual and real environments. I received my PhD in Physics from the Tübingen University in Germany and researched for a decade in the Virtual Reality group of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany. After a post-doc in Psychology at Vanderbilt University I joined the School of Interactive Arts & Technology of Simon Fraser University as an assistant professor in 2008. My research approach combines fundamental scientific research with an applied perspective of improving human-computer interaction.
I combine multi-disciplinary research approaches and immersive virtual environments to investigate what constitutes effective, robust, embodied and intuitive human spatial cognition, orientation and behaviour (and many other things as you can see on the projects pages). This fundamental knowledge is used to guide the design of novel, more effective human-computer interfaces and interaction paradigms that enable similar processes in computer-mediated environments like virtual reality (VR) and multi-media. These improved interfaces can then enable and inspire further research, both fundamental and applied.
Supervision
Teaching
Publications
- see also my google scholar page
- my ACM publications can be downloaded here.
- supervised theses
Research Interests
My research interests include:
- Human multi-modal spatial cognition, spatial orientation, spatial updating, and navigation
- Enabling robust and effortless spatial orientation in virtual environments
- Self-motion perception, illusions (“vection”), and simulation; Multi-modal contributions and interactions
- Multi-modal cue integration: Experimentation and theoretical modeling
- Design and iterative evaluation and improvement of perceptually oriented, multi-modal human-computer interfaces and human-centered, effective virtual reality simulations
- Immersion and presence
- Multi-modal, interactive art/dance performances
Below is a short intro video explaining my overall research agenda and vision for the iSpace lab. See the Vision subpage for details.
Interested in Joining the iSpace Team?
I’m currently looking for bright and motivated PhD students to join our iSpace lab. See the Contact & Join Us subpage for details.
Projects
VR Locomotion Interfaces Survey: How to Move in VR?
There are a multitude of different VR locomotion interfaces out there, all with their own pros and cons. In fact, far too many to all investigate in one behavioural study — so let’s ask diverse VR experts for their opinion… Interested in supporting research on VR locomotion interfaces and helping the VR community better understand the pros and cons of different interfaces? We created a surve…
FaceHaptics: Robot Arm based Versatile Facial Haptics for Immersive Environments
Beyond audiovisual cues in VR: Using an HMD-mounted robot arm for versatile facial haptics Abstract: FaceHaptics is a novel haptic display based on a robot arm attached to a head-mounted virtual reality display. It provides localized, multi-directional and movable haptic cues in the form of wind, warmth, moving and single-point touch events and water spray to dedicated parts of the face …
BioSpaceVR
Experience space like never before: An awe-inspiring VR experience that takes place in space where the Sun and stars react to biosensors. BioSpaceVR seeks to provide a virtual self-transcendent experience. Self-transcendent experiences are characterized by the feeling of unity with others and the world. Our project is a bio-responsive VR experience that creates an almost childlike experience of …
Immersive Installation for Creative Expression and Public Performance: Transcending Perception
Artist Statement Transcending Perception is an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) installation developed by John Desnoyers-Stewart that allows participants to collaborate in the creative, improvisational production of multisensory experiences. Bodies and space are transformed into instruments which translate presence into performance. This installation reminds participants that they are cre…
Body RemiXer
Extending Bodies to Stimulate Social Connection in an Immersive Installation Body RemiXer connects bodies through movement. It is an experiential projection based Virtual Reality installation that explores novel forms of embodied interaction between multiple participants where their bodies mix into a shared embodied representation producing a playful interaction that aims to support the feeling o…
Lucid Loop: A Virtual Deep Learning Biofeedback System for Lucid Dreaming Practice
Can VR and neurofeedback deep learning art help enhance attention and lucid dreaming practice? Lucid dreaming, knowing one is dreaming while dreaming, is an important tool for exploring consciousness and bringing awareness to different aspects of life. We created a system called Lucid Loop: a virtual reality experience where one can practice lucid awareness via neurofeedback. Visuals are creativ…
Connecting through JeL – bio-responsive VR for interpersonal synchronization
Can a bio-responsive generative art installation foster interpersonal synchronization and connection? JeL is a bio-responsive, immersive, interactive, generative art installation designed to encourage physiological synchronization between the immersants. In this project, we will be exploring how novel forms of interaction can be included in immersive technology to foster the feeling of connection…
Embodied & Intuitive Flying for VR, Gaming, and TeleOperation
Flying has been a dream for mankind for millenia — but flying interfaces for VR, gaming, and teleoperation (e.g., drones) typically rely on cumbersome double-joystick/gamepads and do not allow for intuitive and embodied flying experiences. Here, we develop low-cost embodied flying interfaces that adapt leaning-based motion cueing paradigms thus freeing up hands for additional tasks beyond just na…
NaviBoard: Efficiently Navigating Virtual Environments
Here we propose a novel and cost-effective setup of a leaning-based interface (“NaviBoard”) that allows people to efficiently navigate virtual environments — with performance levels matching the gold standard of free-space walking, without any increase in motion sickness Abstract Walking has always been the most common locomotion mode for humans in the real world. As a result, it has also been co…
3D User Interfaces Course
Siggraph 2018: 3D User Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Games: 3D Selection, Manipulation, and Spatial Navigation 3-hour Course Presented at Siggraph 2018 In this course, we will take a detailed look at different topics in the field of 3D user interfaces (3DUIs) for Virtual Reality and Gaming. With the advent of Augmented and Virtual Reality in numerous application areas, the need and interest…
VR/MR/AR 4 Good: Creating with a Purpose
Interested in connecting & joining? If you’re interested in connecting to others engaged or interested in the xR4Good field, you could join the xR4Good facebook group, or fill out this online signup sheet and state what you’re interested in Introduction Over the past five years, we have seen awareness and creation of Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality (VR/MR/AR or, the ‘immersive realit…
Connected through "AWE": creating immersive experiences for social connection
Do you get enough “awe” in your life? In our busy day-to-day lives, we often take our experiences for granted. While we have the technology to connect with one another, like smart phones, we don’t necessarily get outside with nature, or stargaze. Such activities may consist of common awe-inspiring moments, and we now understand that feeling awe is associated with all sorts of social and well…
Navigation Interface Tutorial
Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice First version held at IEEE VR 2017, Sunday, March 19, 1:30pm — 5:00pm, updated variants of the tutorial will be presented at ACM Chi 2018 (slides) and IEEE VR 2018. At The Spatial Cognition 2018 conference we will present a new tutorial on Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments focusing more on the…
Gamified Research
Gamifying Research — Researchifying Games While traditional experimental paradigms offer tight stimulus control and repeatability, then tend to be a bit boring and removed from many real-world situations, which can limit real-world transferability of results. How can we bring together the methodological strenghs of research with the intrinsic motivation of playfulness and gaming? The …
Navigational Search in VR: Do Reference Frames Help?
Would the rectangular reference frame of a CAVE help to reduce disorientation and improve navigation performance in VR? Here, we show that simply providing the rectangular reference frame of a room (as a simple wireframe cuboid), but not a CAVE improved navigational search performance. Despite recent advances in virtual reality, locomotion in a virtual environment is still restricted becau…
Virtual Earthgazing - towards an overview effect in Virtual Reality
How can we use immersive VR to give people pivotal positive experiences without having to send them out into space? “We went to the Moon as technicians, we returned as humanitarians” reflected Edgar Mitchell after his space flight. This describes the overview effect – a profound awe-inspiring experience of seeing Earth from space resulting in a cognitive shift in worldview, le…
Lean and Elegant Motion Cueing in VR
How do we best design locomotion interfaces for VR that provide “enough” physical motion cues (vestibular/proprioceptive) while still being effective, affordable, compact, and safe? Despite amazing progress in computer graphics and VR displays, most affordable and room-sized VR locomotion interfaces provide only little physical motion cues (e.g., vestibular & proprioceptive cues). To provide…
Pulse Breath Water
Pulse Breath Water is an immersive virtual environment manipulated by the pulse of a participant’s breath that provokes and challenges the interaction between a user and the substantial element of the environment: water. The system “senses” the participant, while the participant’s breathing feeds the system. The process is a symbiotic play between internal human processes [biosensing t…
Lost Spirit
Flight after death: Lost Spirit is an experiential-based Virtual Reality (VR) game whereby the player is transported into the spirit world as they take flight to the afterlife. Experience flight, weightlessness, and wonder. In Lost Spirit, you are stuck in the limbo — a world between the living and the dead. You will drift and fly through different environments, each corresponding to different…
Immersive & Embodied Teleoperation Interfaces
Developing virtual interfaces for embodied tele-operation and locomotion. How can we best design and implement an embodied telepresence system for tele-robotics, so we can safely explore remote, hard-to-reach, or potentially hazardous areas or situations? The goal of the “TeleSpider” project is to design and implement a telepresence system where users can remotely operate a robotic spid…
Biofeedback in VR - SOLAR
Resonance in Virtual Environments: hacking biofeedback for altering user’s affective states How can we combine immersive virtual environments (VE) with biofeedback and gamification to foster relaxation, de-stressing and meditative states? That is, instead of increasing sensory overload, can we use the immersive and affective potential of VE and gamification to assist especially novice meditato…
Motion Seats for VR
Using motion seats for enhancing locomotion and immersion in VR How can we provide a “moving experience” through VR without having to use a full-scale motion platform? Could a compact and relatively low-cost “motion seat” provide some of the same benefits, thus reducing cost, complexity, space & safety requirements? Despite considerable advances in Simulation and Virtual Real…
VR in Architecture Design & Review
How can we use immersive Virtual Reality and embodied locomotion interfaces to to design more cost– and space-efficient solutions for effective presentation and communication of architectural designs and ideas? Our overall goal is to iteratively design and evaluate a novel embodied VR system that enables users to quickly, intuitively, and precisely position their virtual viewpoint in 3D space…
Transition into VR: TransLocation
How can we ease users’ transition from the real surroundings into the virtual world? Many of today’s virtual reality (VR) setups are very much focused on technical aspects rather then the benefits of a coherent user experience. This work explores the idea of enhancing the VR experience with a transition phase. On a physical level, this transition offers the user a meaningful metaphor for en…
Cross-Disciplinary 'Immersion' Framework
Describing media as ‘immersive’ is ambiguous. From debilitating addiction to therapeutic relief, media engagement holds a clear duality in its effect on humanity… Without an interdisciplinary characterization of “immersion”, why do we allow this concept to be so readily invoked in discussions of books, visual art, video games, virtual reality systems and more? While “immersion” into tradit…
The Tabletop Makerspace
The tabletop Makerspace was a Mitacs internship project conducted in collaboration with Science World. A set of classroom tools was developed to support ‘Maker’ activities at the museum. The tools included a home-built 3D printer and a set of electronics kits for working with the Arduino microcontroller. An introduction to electronics workshop was developed with local makers and Science World …
Gyroxus Gaming Chair for Motion Cueing in VR
Can self-motion perception in virtual reality (VR) be enhanced by providing affordable, user-powered minimal motion cueing? Introduction & Motivation: Can self-motion perception in virtual reality (VR) be enhanced by providing affordable, user-powered minimal motion cueing? To investigate this, we compared the effect of different interaction and motion paradigms on onset latency and intensi…
Embodied Self-Motion Illusions in VR
How can we provide humans with a believable sensation of being in and moving through computer-generated environments (like VR, computer games, or movies) without the need for costly and cumbersome motion platforms or large free-space walking areas? That is, how can we “cheat intelligently” by providing a compelling, embodied self-motion illusion (“vection”) without the need for full physical mo…
Dynamic Visual Cues for Spatial Updating
Why is object recognition from novel viewpoints facilitated if not the object rotates, but the observer moves around the object? According to the prevailing opinion, “spatial updating” of our mental spatial representation is supposed to be the underlying process. Here, we provide first evidence that challenge this notion, in that dynamic visual cues alone might be sufficient or at least contrib…
Navigational Search in VR: Do we need to walk?
Do we need full physical motions for effective navigation through Virtual Environments? Recent results suggest that translations might not be as important as previously believed, which could enable us to reduce overall simulation effort and cost Physical rotations and translations are the basic constituents of navigation behavior, yet there is mixed evidence about their relative importance for co…
Spatial Cognition in VR vs. real world
Comparing spatial perception/cognition in real versus immersive virtual environments: it doesn’t compare! Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in psychological research and applications – but does VR really afford natural human spatial perception/cognition, which is a prerequisite for effective spatial behavior? Using judgment of relative direction (JRD) tasks, Riecke & McNamara (Psychonom…
iSpaceMecha
Collaboration between the iSpace lab at SIAT and Mechatronics Undergraduate Interns to design and build a unique, virtual reality multi-modal motion simulator The iSpace program is centered on investigating what constitutes effective, robust, and intuitive human spatial orientation and behaviour. This fundamental knowledge will be applied to design novel, more effective human-computer interfaces …
Path Integration in 3D
Switching Spatial Reference Frames for Yaw and Pitch Navigation: We’re used to navigating on the ground plane, and have developed specific strategies to do so. How do these change if we move in a vertical plane (roller-coaster-like, including head over heels motions)? Can we still maintain orientation and remember where we came from, even though such upwards or downwards (pitch) motions are less …
Auditory Navigation Displays
Can spatial auditory cues enable us to remain oriented while navigating real or virtual environments? Non-visual navigation interfaces are crucial for the blind, who suffer great reductions in mobility because of the difficulty of navigating new environments. Sighted users may also benefit from these types of displays when they are navigating but can’t see the screen of their mobile devi…
Sympathetic Guitar
Do humans response socially to abstract, expressive human-computer interfaces? To interact with the Sympathetic Guitar is to use a familiar and comfortable Western musical interface to feel an instant connection to musical culture and style of the East. The prototype senses guitarists’ hand motions and performance dynamics to augment a standard classical guitar with a digital drone…
Spatial Updating With(out) Physical Motions?
How important are physical motions for effective spatial orientation in VR? Most virtual reality simulators have a serious flaw: Users tend to get easily lost and disoriented as they navigate. According to the prevailing opinion, this is because physical motion cues are absolutely required for staying oriented while moving. In this study, we investigated how physical motion cues contribute …
Sonic Cradle
Sonic Cradle suspends the body is a completely dark chamber which encourages experiences comparable to mindfulness meditation. Users compose peaceful soundscapes in real-time using only their breathing. Introduction and demo of the Sonic Cradle Sonic Cradle is a relaxing human-computer interaction paradigm designed to foster meditative attentional patterns. The current p…
Projects
VR Locomotion Interfaces Survey: How to Move in VR?
There are a multitude of different VR locomotion interfaces out there, all with their own pros and cons. In fact, far too many to all investigate in one behavioural study - so let's ask diverse VR experts for their opinion... Interested in supporting research on VR locomotion interfaces and helping the VR community better understand the pros and cons of different interfaces? We created a surve...
FaceHaptics: Robot Arm based Versatile Facial Haptics for Immersive Environments
Beyond audiovisual cues in VR: Using an HMD-mounted robot arm for versatile facial haptics Abstract: FaceHaptics is a novel haptic display based on a robot arm attached to a head-mounted virtual reality display. It provides localized, multi-directional and movable haptic cues in the form of wind, warmth, moving and single-point touch events and water spray to dedicated parts of the face ...
BioSpaceVR
Experience space like never before: An awe-inspiring VR experience that takes place in space where the Sun and stars react to biosensors. BioSpaceVR seeks to provide a virtual self-transcendent experience. Self-transcendent experiences are characterized by the feeling of unity with others and the world. Our project is a bio-responsive VR experience that creates an almost childlike experience of ...
Immersive Installation for Creative Expression and Public Performance: Transcending Perception
Artist Statement Transcending Perception is an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) installation developed by John Desnoyers-Stewart that allows participants to collaborate in the creative, improvisational production of multisensory experiences. Bodies and space are transformed into instruments which translate presence into performance. This installation reminds participants that they are cre...
Body RemiXer
Extending Bodies to Stimulate Social Connection in an Immersive Installation Body RemiXer connects bodies through movement. It is an experiential projection based Virtual Reality installation that explores novel forms of embodied interaction between multiple participants where their bodies mix into a shared embodied representation producing a playful interaction that aims to support the feeling o...
Lucid Loop: A Virtual Deep Learning Biofeedback System for Lucid Dreaming Practice
Can VR and neurofeedback deep learning art help enhance attention and lucid dreaming practice? Lucid dreaming, knowing one is dreaming while dreaming, is an important tool for exploring consciousness and bringing awareness to different aspects of life. We created a system called Lucid Loop: a virtual reality experience where one can practice lucid awareness via neurofeedback. Visuals are creativ...
Connecting through JeL – bio-responsive VR for interpersonal synchronization
Can a bio-responsive generative art installation foster interpersonal synchronization and connection? JeL is a bio-responsive, immersive, interactive, generative art installation designed to encourage physiological synchronization between the immersants. In this project, we will be exploring how novel forms of interaction can be included in immersive technology to foster the feeling of connection...
Embodied & Intuitive Flying for VR, Gaming, and TeleOperation
Flying has been a dream for mankind for millenia - but flying interfaces for VR, gaming, and teleoperation (e.g., drones) typically rely on cumbersome double-joystick/gamepads and do not allow for intuitive and embodied flying experiences. Here, we develop low-cost embodied flying interfaces that adapt leaning-based motion cueing paradigms thus freeing up hands for additional tasks beyond just na...
NaviBoard: Efficiently Navigating Virtual Environments
Here we propose a novel and cost-effective setup of a leaning-based interface ("NaviBoard") that allows people to efficiently navigate virtual environments - with performance levels matching the gold standard of free-space walking, without any increase in motion sickness Abstract Walking has always been the most common locomotion mode for humans in the real world. As a result, it has also been co...
3D User Interfaces Course
Siggraph 2018: 3D User Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Games: 3D Selection, Manipulation, and Spatial Navigation 3-hour Course Presented at Siggraph 2018 In this course, we will take a detailed look at different topics in the field of 3D user interfaces (3DUIs) for Virtual Reality and Gaming. With the advent of Augmented and Virtual Reality in numerous application areas, the need and interest...
VR/MR/AR 4 Good: Creating with a Purpose
Interested in connecting & joining? If you're interested in connecting to others engaged or interested in the xR4Good field, you could join the xR4Good facebook group, or fill out this online signup sheet and state what you're interested in Introduction Over the past five years, we have seen awareness and creation of Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality (VR/MR/AR or, the ‘immersive realit...
Connected through "AWE": creating immersive experiences for social connection
Do you get enough “awe” in your life? In our busy day-to-day lives, we often take our experiences for granted. While we have the technology to connect with one another, like smart phones, we don’t necessarily get outside with nature, or stargaze. Such activities may consist of common awe-inspiring moments, and we now understand that feeling awe is associated with all sorts of social and well...
Navigation Interface Tutorial
Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice First version held at IEEE VR 2017, Sunday, March 19, 1:30pm - 5:00pm, updated variants of the tutorial will be presented at ACM Chi 2018 (slides) and IEEE VR 2018. At The Spatial Cognition 2018 conference we will present a new tutorial on Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments focusing more on the...
Gamified Research
Gamifying Research - Researchifying Games While traditional experimental paradigms offer tight stimulus control and repeatability, then tend to be a bit boring and removed from many real-world situations, which can limit real-world transferability of results. How can we bring together the methodological strenghs of research with the intrinsic motivation of playfulness and gaming? The ...
Navigational Search in VR: Do Reference Frames Help?
Would the rectangular reference frame of a CAVE help to reduce disorientation and improve navigation performance in VR? Here, we show that simply providing the rectangular reference frame of a room (as a simple wireframe cuboid), but not a CAVE improved navigational search performance. Despite recent advances in virtual reality, locomotion in a virtual environment is still restricted becau...
Virtual Earthgazing - towards an overview effect in Virtual Reality
How can we use immersive VR to give people pivotal positive experiences without having to send them out into space? “We went to the Moon as technicians, we returned as humanitarians” reflected Edgar Mitchell after his space flight. This describes the overview effect – a profound awe-inspiring experience of seeing Earth from space resulting in a cognitive shift in worldview, le...
Lean and Elegant Motion Cueing in VR
How do we best design locomotion interfaces for VR that provide "enough" physical motion cues (vestibular/proprioceptive) while still being effective, affordable, compact, and safe? Despite amazing progress in computer graphics and VR displays, most affordable and room-sized VR locomotion interfaces provide only little physical motion cues (e.g., vestibular & proprioceptive cues). To provide...
Pulse Breath Water
Pulse Breath Water is an immersive virtual environment manipulated by the pulse of a participant’s breath that provokes and challenges the interaction between a user and the substantial element of the environment: water. The system “senses” the participant, while the participant’s breathing feeds the system. The process is a symbiotic play between internal human processes [biosensing t...
Lost Spirit
Flight after death: Lost Spirit is an experiential-based Virtual Reality (VR) game whereby the player is transported into the spirit world as they take flight to the afterlife. Experience flight, weightlessness, and wonder. In Lost Spirit, you are stuck in the limbo - a world between the living and the dead. You will drift and fly through different environments, each corresponding to different...
Immersive & Embodied Teleoperation Interfaces
Developing virtual interfaces for embodied tele-operation and locomotion. How can we best design and implement an embodied telepresence system for tele-robotics, so we can safely explore remote, hard-to-reach, or potentially hazardous areas or situations? The goal of the "TeleSpider" project is to design and implement a telepresence system where users can remotely operate a robotic spid...
state.scape: EEG-based Responsive Art Installation
State.scape: Using EEG-based brain-computer interfaces for a responsive art installation State.scape is an interactive installation in which audio-visuals are generated from users affective states (engagement, excitement, and meditation). The installation relies on a brain-computer interface based virtual environment and sonification, which both served as a platform for the exploration of users...
Biofeedback in VR - SOLAR
Resonance in Virtual Environments: hacking biofeedback for altering user's affective states How can we combine immersive virtual environments (VE) with biofeedback and gamification to foster relaxation, de-stressing and meditative states? That is, instead of increasing sensory overload, can we use the immersive and affective potential of VE and gamification to assist especially novice meditato...
Motion Seats for VR
Using motion seats for enhancing locomotion and immersion in VR How can we provide a "moving experience" through VR without having to use a full-scale motion platform? Could a compact and relatively low-cost "motion seat" provide some of the same benefits, thus reducing cost, complexity, space & safety requirements? Despite considerable advances in Simulation and Virtual Real...
VR in Architecture Design & Review
How can we use immersive Virtual Reality and embodied locomotion interfaces to to design more cost- and space-efficient solutions for effective presentation and communication of architectural designs and ideas? Our overall goal is to iteratively design and evaluate a novel embodied VR system that enables users to quickly, intuitively, and precisely position their virtual viewpoint in 3D space...
Transition into VR: TransLocation
How can we ease users' transition from the real surroundings into the virtual world? Many of today’s virtual reality (VR) setups are very much focused on technical aspects rather then the benefits of a coherent user experience. This work explores the idea of enhancing the VR experience with a transition phase. On a physical level, this transition offers the user a meaningful metaphor for en...
Cross-Disciplinary 'Immersion' Framework
Describing media as 'immersive' is ambiguous. From debilitating addiction to therapeutic relief, media engagement holds a clear duality in its effect on humanity... Without an interdisciplinary characterization of "immersion", why do we allow this concept to be so readily invoked in discussions of books, visual art, video games, virtual reality systems and more? While "immersion" into tradit...
The Tabletop Makerspace
The tabletop Makerspace was a Mitacs internship project conducted in collaboration with Science World. A set of classroom tools was developed to support ‘Maker’ activities at the museum. The tools included a home-built 3D printer and a set of electronics kits for working with the Arduino microcontroller. An introduction to electronics workshop was developed with local makers and Science World ...
Gyroxus Gaming Chair for Motion Cueing in VR
Can self-motion perception in virtual reality (VR) be enhanced by providing affordable, user-powered minimal motion cueing? Introduction & Motivation: Can self-motion perception in virtual reality (VR) be enhanced by providing affordable, user-powered minimal motion cueing? To investigate this, we compared the effect of different interaction and motion paradigms on onset latency and intensi...
Embodied Self-Motion Illusions in VR
How can we provide humans with a believable sensation of being in and moving through computer-generated environments (like VR, computer games, or movies) without the need for costly and cumbersome motion platforms or large free-space walking areas? That is, how can we "cheat intelligently" by providing a compelling, embodied self-motion illusion ("vection") without the need for full physical mo...
Dynamic Visual Cues for Spatial Updating
Why is object recognition from novel viewpoints facilitated if not the object rotates, but the observer moves around the object? According to the prevailing opinion, "spatial updating" of our mental spatial representation is supposed to be the underlying process. Here, we provide first evidence that challenge this notion, in that dynamic visual cues alone might be sufficient or at least contrib...
Navigational Search in VR: Do we need to walk?
Do we need full physical motions for effective navigation through Virtual Environments? Recent results suggest that translations might not be as important as previously believed, which could enable us to reduce overall simulation effort and cost Physical rotations and translations are the basic constituents of navigation behavior, yet there is mixed evidence about their relative importance for co...
Spatial Cognition in VR vs. real world
Comparing spatial perception/cognition in real versus immersive virtual environments: it doesn't compare! Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in psychological research and applications – but does VR really afford natural human spatial perception/cognition, which is a prerequisite for effective spatial behavior? Using judgment of relative direction (JRD) tasks, Riecke & McNamara (Psychonom...
iSpaceMecha
Collaboration between the iSpace lab at SIAT and Mechatronics Undergraduate Interns to design and build a unique, virtual reality multi-modal motion simulator The iSpace program is centered on investigating what constitutes effective, robust, and intuitive human spatial orientation and behaviour. This fundamental knowledge will be applied to design novel, more effective human-computer interfaces ...
Path Integration in 3D
Switching Spatial Reference Frames for Yaw and Pitch Navigation: We're used to navigating on the ground plane, and have developed specific strategies to do so. How do these change if we move in a vertical plane (roller-coaster-like, including head over heels motions)? Can we still maintain orientation and remember where we came from, even though such upwards or downwards (pitch) motions are less ...
Auditory Navigation Displays
Can spatial auditory cues enable us to remain oriented while navigating real or virtual environments? Non-visual navigation interfaces are crucial for the blind, who suffer great reductions in mobility because of the difficulty of navigating new environments. Sighted users may also benefit from these types of displays when they are navigating but can't see the screen of their mobile devi...
Sympathetic Guitar
Do humans response socially to abstract, expressive human-computer interfaces? To interact with the Sympathetic Guitar is to use a familiar and comfortable Western musical interface to feel an instant connection to musical culture and style of the East. The prototype senses guitarists' hand motions and performance dynamics to augment a standard classical guitar with a digital drone...
Spatial Updating With(out) Physical Motions?
How important are physical motions for effective spatial orientation in VR? Most virtual reality simulators have a serious flaw: Users tend to get easily lost and disoriented as they navigate. According to the prevailing opinion, this is because physical motion cues are absolutely required for staying oriented while moving. In this study, we investigated how physical motion cues contribute ...
Sonic Cradle
Sonic Cradle suspends the body is a completely dark chamber which encourages experiences comparable to mindfulness meditation. Users compose peaceful soundscapes in real-time using only their breathing. [vimeo 35764652] Introduction and demo of the Sonic Cradle Sonic Cradle is a relaxing human-computer interaction paradigm designed to foster meditative attentional patterns. The current p...