First Steps Towards Walk-In-Place Locomotion and Haptic Feedback in Virtual Reality for Visually Impaired

Kreimeier, Julian; Götzelmann, Timo

doi:10.1145/3290607.3312944

Cited by 32 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Recent mixed reality projects for BVIP resorted to walk-in-place solutions [ 11 ], some of which were based on treadmills [ 12 ], whereas others included products such as HTC Vive to capture 6-DoF movements of the user within a restricted area [ 13 , 14 ]. Conversely, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping was also used to keep track of the users’ 6-DoF head movements, emphasis placed on visual inertial odometry [ 15 , 16 ].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

VES: A Mixed-Reality Development Platform of Navigation Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired

Real

Araújo

2021

Sensors

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Herein, we describe the Virtually Enhanced Senses (VES) system, a novel and highly configurable wireless sensor-actuator network conceived as a development and test-bench platform of navigation systems adapted for blind and visually impaired people. It allows to immerse its users into “walkable” purely virtual or mixed environments with simulated sensors and validate navigation system designs prior to prototype development. The haptic, acoustic, and proprioceptive feedback supports state-of-art sensory substitution devices (SSD). In this regard, three SSD were integrated in VES as examples, including the well-known “The vOICe”. Additionally, the data throughput, latency and packet loss of the wireless communication can be controlled to observe its impact in the provided spatial knowledge and resulting mobility and orientation performance. Finally, the system has been validated by testing a combination of two previous visual-acoustic and visual-haptic sensory substitution schemas with 23 normal-sighted subjects. The recorded data includes the output of a “gaze-tracking” utility adapted for SSD.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

VES: A Mixed-Reality Development Platform of Navigation Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired

Real

Araújo

2021

Sensors

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“…Relatively little work has considered how to make the AR applications that are quickly becoming popular more broadly accessible, aside from guidelines on the use of color and audio in AR for users with low vision or hearing impairments [37]. Prior work has considered how to make VR accessible for people with visual impairments via audio [67] and haptic feedback [32,72]. For example, SeeingVR introduces methods for making VR accessible to low-vision users, and largely takes inspiration from prior systems for providing access to the digital and physical worlds, e.g., through adjustments to visual content and through various automated methods for describing or enhancing the virtual content at runtime [18,72,76].…”

Section: Making Applications Accessiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Making Mobile Augmented Reality Applications Accessible

Herskovitz

White

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

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Augmented Reality (AR) technology creates new immersive experiences in entertainment, games, education, retail, and social media. AR content is often primarily visual and it is challenging to enable access to it non-visually due to the mix of virtual and real-world content. In this paper, we identify common constituent tasks in AR by analyzing existing mobile AR applications for iOS, and characterize the design space of tasks that require accessible alternatives. For each of the major task categories, we create prototype accessible alternatives that we evaluate in a study with 10 blind participants to explore their perceptions of accessible AR. Our study demonstrates that these prototypes make AR possible to use for blind users and reveals a number of insights to move forward. We believe our work sets forth not only exemplars for developers to create accessible AR applications, but also a roadmap for future research to make AR comprehensively accessible. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); Accessibility technologies; Mixed / augmented reality.

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“…This movement is then transposed in the virtual world. Kreimeier and Götzelmann [39] propose a system using walk-in-place with a Cyberith Virtualizer to navigate in an indoor environment. The system enables bipedalism and a virtual white cane through vibration on a hand controller, while navigating in large spaces.…”

Section: Accessible Virtual Reality For People With Visual Impairmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

X-Road

Thévin¹,

Briant²,

Brock

2020

ACM Trans. Access. Comput.

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Orientation and Mobility (O&M) classes teach people with visual impairments how to navigate the world, for instance how to cross a road. Yet, this training can be difficult and dangerous due to conditions such as traffic and weather. Virtual Reality (VR) can overcome these challenges by providing interactive controlled environments. However, most existing VR tools rely on visual feedback, which limits their use with students with visual impairment. In a collaborative design approach with O&M instructors, we designed an affordable and accessible VR system for O&M classes, called X-Road. Using a smartphone and a bespoke headmount, X-Road provides both visual and audio feedback and allows users to move in space, as in the real world. In a study with 13 students with visual impairments, X-Road proved to be an effective alternative to teaching and learning classical O&M tasks, and both students and instructors were enthusiastic about this technology. We conclude with design recommendations for inclusive VR systems. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Virtual reality; Accessibility systems and tools; Participatory design;

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First Steps Towards Walk-In-Place Locomotion and Haptic Feedback in Virtual Reality for Visually Impaired

Cited by 32 publications

References 5 publications

VES: A Mixed-Reality Development Platform of Navigation Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired

VES: A Mixed-Reality Development Platform of Navigation Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired

Making Mobile Augmented Reality Applications Accessible

X-Road

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