Collision Avoidance and Distance Perception in the Presence of Real and Virtual Objects in a Large Immersive Projection Space

Dr. Gerd Bruder

Immersive Media Group (IMG)

Department of Computer Science

University of Würzburg, Germany

Our main objective in this project was to compare obstacle avoidance behavior between simple real or virtual geometrical objects as well as real or virtual humans with different affordances. We conducted a behavioral dynamics experiment, which revealed different avoidance behavior of participants towards the considered virtual objects compared to their physical counterparts. During additional pilot tests in the large walking area of the IMMERSIA setup we considered different potential contributing factors. We observed differences in distance estimates to virtual objects depending on the position of the observer in the projection setup. In order to formally investigate this factor we conducted a second experiment. The experiment revealed interaction effects between accommodation distances, stereoscopic parallax, and target distance on distance judgments in the projection environment, which provides interesting guidelines and vistas for future research.