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ΙΠΕ/ΝΕΚΥΠ/0311/02: A State-of-the-Art VR CAVE facility for the Advancement of Multi-Disciplinary Research & Development in Cyprus

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VR CAVE

Co-funded under the 2011 Call for Proposals of the Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Innovation 2009-2010

Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation
European Union Structural Funds

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VR CAVE

Amount total: €499.887
Partners

Duration: 30 months

02 April 2012 – 02 October 2014
→ extended to 01 April 2015

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Objectives

Establishment of a state-of-the-art VR CAVE facility
Advancement of Multi-Disciplinary Research & Development in Cyprus

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Multi-Disciplinary Research & Development in Cyprus

Immersive VR Visualizations of Cultural Heritage

Cyprus University of Technology, Dept. Multimedia and Graphic Arts

Visual Media Computing Lab
Immersive and Creative Technologies Lab

Immersive VR Crowd Simulations

University of Cyprus, Dept. of Computer Science

Computer Graphics Lab

Immersion Safety Requirement Analysis

European University of Cyprus

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People

Alistair Sutcliffe
Yiorgos Chrysanthou
Andreas Lanitis
Andreas Gregoriades
Aimilia Tzanavari
Chris Christou
Fernando Loizides
Nefi Charalambous
Nikolas Ladas
Panayiotis Charalambous
Marios Kyriakou

Nicholas Michael
Maria Drakou
Marinos Savva
Kyriakos Heracleous
Francesca Sella
Irene Katsouri
Constantinos Terlikkas
Skevi Matsentidou
Marilia Panayiotou
Stalo Pistola
Charalambos Poullis

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Publications

Tzanavari, A., Charalambous-Darden, N., Herakleous, K. and Poullis, C. “Effectiveness of an immersive virtual environment (CAVE) for teaching pedestrian crossing to children with PDD-NOS”. (Submitted to) 15th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies – ICALT2015.
F. Loizides, A. El Kater, C. Terlikas, A. Lanitis, D. Michael. Presenting Cypriot Cultural Heritage In Virtual Reality: A User Evaluation. Procs. Of the International Conference on Cultural Heritage EuroMed, 2014.(EUROMED2014)
Christou, C., Tzanavari, A., Herakleous, K. & Poullis, C. (2014) “Comparison of Two Travel Modes in an Immersive Virtual Environment Wayfinding Task Involving Adults and Children” (Submitted to) Interacting with Computers (IwC), Oxford University Press.
Tzanavari, A., Matsentidou, S., Christou, C.G. and Poullis, C. User Experience Observations on Factors That Affect Performance in a Road-Crossing Training Application for Children Using the CAVE. In: First International Conference, LCT 2014, Held as Part of HCI International 2014, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2014.
A. Gregoriades, A. Sutcliffe, Simulation-based requirements discovery for smart driver assistive technologies, IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 2014.
N. Michael and A. Lanitis, Model-Based Generation of Realistic 3D Full Body Avatars from Uncalibrated Multi-View Photographs, Submitted to the 10th International Conference on. Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations (AIAI2014), 2014.
A. Gregoriades, Immersive Safety Requirements Validation Case Study
Katsouri, I., Tzanavari, A., Herakleous, K. & Poullis, C. “Visualizing and Testing Hypotheses in Marine Archaeology in a VR CAVE Environment”. (Accepted at) ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH).
A. Gregoriades, C. Florides, S. Christodoulou, M. Pampaka, Requirements discovery for smart driver assistive technology through simulation, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics AHFE 2014
S. Matsentidou, C. Poullis, Immersive Visualizations in a VR Cave Environment for the Training and Enhancement of Social Skills for Children with Autism, 9th International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications, 2014
C. Terlikkas, C. Poullis, Towards a More Effective Way of Presenting Virtual Reality Museums Exhibits, 9th International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications, 2014
C. Poullis, A Framework for Automatic Modeling from Pointcloud Data, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2013
N. Michael, A. El Kater, A. Lanitis. Towards The Design of Personalized Virtual Reality Applications, [Abstract], 6th Cyprus Workshop on Signal Processing and Informatics, Cyprus, 2013
N. Michael, A. El Kater, A. Lanitis, Increasing User Engagement in Re-designed Classic Video Games, Submitted to the Joint Conference on Virtual Reality 2013.
A. Gregoriades, C. Florides, V. Papadopoulou-Lesta, M. Pampaka, Driver Behaviour Analysis Through Simulation, IEEE SMC 2013 conference- Manchester

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More information

Project’s Website

www.vrcave.com.cy

ICT Lab’s website

www.theICTlab.org

ICT Lab’s Facebook page

www.facebook.com/theICTlab

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Keynote Speech

Applying CAVE technology to solving practical problems: Methods, Lessons Learned and Future Prospects

Alistair Sutcliffe

Professor of Systems Engineering

School of Computing & Communications

University of Lancaster and University of Manchester

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User Experience Observations in the VR CAVE and their impact on design principles

Presented by Aimilia Tzanavari

User Experience Researcher

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The research team

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”, Helen Keller

Chris G. Christou
Kyriakos Herakleous
Charalambos Poullis
Nefi Charalambous-Darden
Irene Katsouri
Skevi Matsentidou
Constantinos Terlikkas
Maria Christofi

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Outline of talk

What is User Experience
User Experience in immersive virtual environments
Experiments
Pros and Cons of CAVE
Impact on Design Principles

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What is User Experience

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This is a user →

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Users

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More users

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Some might have difficulties…

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Even more users!

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There is no single profile

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But… we all want

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to be happy!

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And … meet our objectives!

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User Experience

It is the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific product, system, website, app, etc.

User Experience Design

It’s about designing products, systems, websites, apps, etc. that help people meet their objectives efficiently, effectively, while at the same time feeling good about their experience!

User Experience Research

It’s about doing the research to identify who the users are, their characteristics, abilities, needs, what they want to achieve, test to see whether their goals are met, to what extent and so on…

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So…

Users have different abilities, needs, preferences and goals
For every product, system, website, application, the target user group has to be identified
The design has to focus on that particular user group (hint: you can’t design for everyone!)
Evaluation has to be based on that group

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UX in immersive virtual environments

There is a variety of applications, is various domains, with various goals, for various user groups.

Games
Training
Visualizations
Etc.

User experience has to do with the sense of presence, simulator sickness, meeting users’ objectives, efficiency, etc.

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Immersive VR

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HMD

VR CAVE

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The CAVE is different…

Users have to physically go to the CAVE facility. You cannot buy one for personal use.
They don’t have to wear something on their heads (as in HMD) so they have more freedom to move.
In some cases the CAVE causes simulator sickness symptoms less often than HMD

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Experiments

Pedestrian Crossing training application for children with autism (next presentation)
Marine Archaeology Visualization application for archaeologists (to be presented by Irene Katsouri)
Comparison of two travel modes in a CAVE environment (through a treasure hunt game application)
Analyzing users psychophysiological data in the CAVE

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Experiment: Pedestrian Crossing Application for children with autism

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Objectives/ Background

Investigate the use of the VR CAVE as a learning tool for autistic children: initially high-functioning and subsequently low-functioning
Safe pedestrian crossing is an important skill to be mastered by all children aged 9 and above.
Pedestrian crossing is primarily taught at schools under the Road Safety subject, using traditional classroom-based methods.
Training of children with ASD is an important research topic, especially for low-functioning, where studies are sparse.

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Scene

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Phase One

Original application developed by S. Matsentidou and was evaluated by Autism specialists targeting high-functioning autistic children. It was not possible to find children from this category at that time.
User testing took place employing eleven (11) 9-10 year old children without autism, to prove the application’s effectiveness as a learning tool.
Results were very encouraging. Children responded (through questionnaires) feeling immersed into the application and that they learnt things about the procedure they didn’t know. They all stated that they saw many benefits in using VR for learning Road Safety topics for which experience is a key.

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Phase Two

The application was pilot tested with a low-functioning autistic child, leading to a series of changes to meet his needs.
Finally tested with 6 low-functioning autistic children (PPD)
Results indicated that four of them were able to achieve the desired goal of learning the task in the VR CAVE environment.
These four successfully managed to cross a real pedestrian crossing proving that they could indeed generalize that knowledge.

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Conclusion

These findings are very encouraging for the population of low-functioning autistic children, for which research studies are sparse.
They were encouraging both for the children themselves because they felt the sense of achievement and for their parents because they felt proud of their children’s performance.
This is an indication that Virtual Reality and specifically the VR CAVE can be beneficial for these children’s learning path and therefore more studies are worth pursuing.

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Experiment: Comparison of two travel modes in a CAVE environment

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Objectives

Comparison of gaze-directed and pointing methods navigating in a CAVE under cognitive load
Comparison between adult and child users

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Development

Extended a Traditional Village Scene designed by C. Terlikkas, with signs and other props to serve our experiment objective.
Developed the Treasure Hunt simulation with 8 scenarios

4 different routes
and their 4 inverted ones

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Scene

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Example of the Village Map

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Experiment Procedure

User gets informed about the general task and is asked to:

Find the treasure as quickly as possible
Keep to the path
Keep as close to the center of the path as possible
Navigate to the treasure until a “Success” message appear
After 80 seconds without reaching the treasure the time will expire

In CAVE

a map appears showing the starting position and the treasure position
users have all the time they want to memorize the route
Find the treasure
repeat for the next levels

User answers post-task questionnaires on Presence and Simulator Sickness

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Experiment with Children

Primary school children (6^th grade)
Tested in the first 4 levels
Half of them used the first mode (gaze-directed) and the other half the second mode (pointing)

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Experiment with Adults

Tested the first 4 levels with one mode (randomly chosen)
The 4 inverted levels with other mode
Eye tracking was used when they asked to examine the map and memorize the route

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Data Collection

Record of their navigation for each level
Their performance (success in finding the treasure or not, time, distance from the path)
Questionnaires on Presence and Simulator Sickness
Eye tracking data (Adults only)

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Example of Eye Tracking Data

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Results Summary

Eye-tracking data showed that users visualised themselves traversing the paths but fixated mainly on the junction points. They used procedural encoding to memorise their route from the start location to the end location.
Adult users demonstrated a preference for the pointing method of motion control
Children did not demonstrate a clear preference for either method.
Children maintained higher accuracy in navigation with the pointing method.

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Presence and Simulator Sickness

Adults

Participants who use computers and games more frequently, responded that they reached higher levels of proficiency in moving and interacting by the end of the experience and felt more present.
Participants, who use computers and games more frequently, rated their simulator sickness symptoms low.

Children

Children who experienced stronger simulator sickness symptoms, reported a higher interference by control devices in their performance

Comparatively

Adults were more moderate in their ratings (presence and SS). We also see an important difference in the frequency that the play electronic games and at the same time their sense of feeling restricted by the control devices used in the experiment. Adults play less frequently and reported feeling that the controls interfered more in their performance.

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Experiment: Analysing users psychophysiological data in the CAVE

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Motivation

There is substantial evidence that VR can give rise to a feeling of being in the place depicted by the virtual environment displays, a sensation known as Presence

Presence can give rise to emotions of fear and anxiety

If the experience is realistic we should be able to see the same physiological responses of people in virtual environments as we see in real environments.

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Motivation

One area of research that has been tested in terms of comparing real-world and VR for emotions is in Proxemics.
Proxemics is the study of interpersonal distance and its influence on anxiety. The distances that people maintain with each other in social situations.
Previous research has shown that people respond to invasions of personal space as they do in the real world. This manifests itself in heightened measures of anxiety increases in electrodermal activity.

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Objective

Previous studies tested with single agents and used HMD.
We wanted to see:

If this effect worked in the CAVE
Whether it worked with crowds as well as with single agents
Whether it affected cognitive processes.

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Methodology

16 subjects (8 male, 8 female)
A Social Anxiety questionnaire was administered prior to the experiment.
Users were given 2 minutes to adjust to the scene
Two conditions were studied: multiple vs individual agents
The ‘distance from user’ parameter took two values: one where avatars invaded interpersonal distance and one where they did not (50cm and 150cm)
Skin Conductance data was recorded
Finally, the user was given a recognition task (in the CAVE): a series of avatars was shown and the user was asked to identify the ones that s/he had seen in the scene before.
The same experiment was conducted with HMD for comparison (again with 16 subjects).

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Scene

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Scene

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Crowd video

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Proxemics video

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Results

Initial results show a strong Electrodermal activity (EDA) response to agents (standing close to the user) as well as crowds.
Initial results show cognitive processing (recognition task) was affected by the distance of agents and the crowd
Female subjects performed better in the recognition task.

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Pros and Cons of the CAVE

Beneficial for training children on topics that they currently learn in a traditional classroom setting, but actually need to be practiced in real life settings to grasp knowledge
Beneficial for training low-functioning autistic children, for the same reason, but also because they can practice a skill in a controlled (i.e. safer) environment

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Beneficial for visualizing scenes and data that would otherwise be difficult to experience (e.g. marine archaeology)
Beneficial for simulating environments that users would otherwise not experience frequently in real life, or at all in cases of phobias, anxieties (e.g. crowd)

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Pros and Cons of the CAVE

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Pros and Cons of the CAVE

The CAVE’s location is fixed and this might be an obstacle for wider use, as well as for testing applications.
Simulator sickness may hinder some users’ interaction/ performance.
The equipment (controller, glasses) might not be comfortable for all users
Not all applications are suitable for being designed for this kind of interaction

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Impact on design principles

When designing applications for the CAVE:

Study your users WELL: who are they, their abilities, what they want to achieve.
Pilot test with 1-2 users. You’ll be surprised at what you discover! Make changes based on those discoveries.
Find your test users (strictly) according to your target group.

As always, making assumptions about how users would interact, leads to risky design decisions.

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Impact on design principles

If the CAVE is to be used as Assistive Technology, then having a relevant expert (e.g. in autism, in mental disorders, etc.) in your team is mandatory.
Children users and adults users are very different: in speed of interaction, attention span, cognitive abilities, etc. The child’s age plays a significant role. The younger the child, the bigger the difference with adults.
Users’ proficiency level in playing electronic games has an impact on their performance in the CAVE: the more experienced users responded feeling less interference from the control devices, therefore increased sense of presence.

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Impact on design principles

Make sure your test users come with a variety of gaming and VR experience levels (unless you target a specific group in this respect), to avoid biased data in your results.
The test user population has to be gender balanced (unless you target a specific gender)
Female users do better in cognitive tasks that involve memory.

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Impact on design principles

Simulator sickness might be an obstacle for your users, preventing them from achieving their goal, so make sure you design so as to keep it to a minimum.
When designing a visualization application, being as real as possible with respect to sizes, dimensions, shadows, forces, etc. is important for achieving immersion/presence. Users can trust the application more.

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- Check out the group’s publications (on the lab’s website) ��- Contact � Aimilia (for UX matters) � aimiliatzanavari@gmail.com � Chris (for VR matters)� christouch2@gmail.com � ��

Need more details?

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