Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Motion Prediction based Safety Boundary Study in Virtual Reality

Nowadays, VR technology has play an indispensable role in promoting the construction of the Metaverse. In this study, we tried to avoid users' body physical collisions within the safety boundary in VR scenes. Three basic motion event categories are defined according to the common motions of users. We segmented users data into three-dimensional coordinates, extracted the motion range features, and constructed the relational data set. Furthermore, we used statistical methods to study the correlation between user characteristics and motion range categories, in order to explore and analyze the possi-bility of optimizing the safety motion range. Finally, we deployed our safety boundary systems in the virtual reality environment.
SPAT-VR: A Holistic and Extensible Framework for VR Project Management

With the increasing availability of VR content and affordability of consumer VR hardware systems, VR has been applied in various domains. However, to our knowledge, at present there are no existing frameworks applicable project management of VR applications. In this paper, we present SPAT-VR: a holistic and extensible framework for VR project management. The proposed framework has been successfully deployed to complete a number of VR projects. A user survey has been conducted with all positive results received on the proposed framework.
Importance of Democratization for Virtual Reality in Education

Virtual Reality (VR) is a quickly growing medium that shows great potential for use in education. However, VR must first become democratized through addressing current barriers to creation. By using the guiding principles of Open Educational Resources, researchers can support the uptake of VR as an educational technology. Given the current direction of research, VR will not become viable in educational contexts until researchers prioritize its democratization.
Behavioral Authentication with Head-Tilt Based Locomotion for Metaverse

In order to address issues with user authentication such as shoulder surfing attacks and authentication timeouts, we proposed an implicit authentication method for locomotion in virtual reality (VR). The method used head-tilt based locomotion for user authentication. We conducted a study to collect a dataset of biological behavior for head-tilt based locomotion. Random Forest and Decision Tree algorithms were used to train the model, comparing the fitting effects of the two algorithms at different distances (3 meters, 6 meters, 9 meters, and 12 meters). We examined the model's accuracy and discovered that it had a high accuracy in identifying one of ten users (above 95 %).
Investigating Interaction Behaviors of Learners in VR Learning Environment

The education researchers use self-reported questionnaires, physiological sensors, and human observers to study the effects of VR in education. The above-mentioned existing data collection mechanisms do not provide information related to the interaction behavior of the learners in VR Learning Environments (VRLE). As a result, understanding the learning processes from the perspective of learners' behavior in VRLE is still in its infancy. Hence, we developed a mechanism that is able to automatically log all the interaction behavior of the learners happening in VRLE along with timestamps. In this paper, we discuss the study conducted with 14 undergraduate engineering students after deploying the developed real-time Interaction Behavioral Data (IBD) collection mechanism in a room-scale VRLE, Maroon VR. The IBD collected will be analyzed to understand the VR behavior of the learners and the learning processes happening in VRLE. The results of the study could be further utilized to model the learners' behavior in VR and to provide adaptive personalized VR learning content.
Fully Automatic Blendshape Generation for Stylized Characters

Avatars are one of the most important elements in virtual environments. Real-time facial retargeting technology is of vital importance in AR/VR interactions, the filmmaking, and the entertainment industry, and blendshapes for avatars are one of its important materials. Previous works either focused on the characters with the same topology, which cannot be generalized to universal avatars, or used optimization methods that have high demand on the dataset. In this paper, we adopt the essence of deep learning and feature transfer to realize deformation transfer, thereby generating blendshapes for target avatars based on the given sources. We proposed a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) to extract the latent space of the avatars and then use a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) model to realize the translation between the latent spaces of the source avatar and target avatars. By decoding the latent code of different blendshapes, we can obtain the blendshapes for the target avatars with the same semantics as that of the source. We qualitatively and quantitatively compared our method with both classical and learning-based methods. The results revealed that the blendshapes generated by our method achieves higher similarity to the groundtruth blendshapes than the state-of-art methods. We also demonstrated that our method can be applied to expression transfer for stylized characters with different topologies.
[DC] Maximizing Natural Walking in Virtual Environments

Being restricted to small physical spaces limits the practicability of real walking in extensive virtual areas. Thus, teleportation or other locomotion metaphors are needed to fully navigate such virtual spaces. Nevertheless, since natural walking reflects the naturalness and intuitiveness of human locomotion well, it is still considered the best locomotion method. Therefore, researchers have mainly focused on developing concepts to increase the applicability of real walking in virtual spaces exceeding the physical space availability. These redirection methods mainly consist of overlapping spaces, redirected walking, and change blindness. Some of these methods have been extended to environments with multiple users. However, most literature considers only one method at the time applied to single users. Since this work focuses on the maximization of the natural walking experience, the combination of RDW in overlapping spaces with optimized reset strategies may complement and thus improve the final user experience. Further, most of previous approaches pre-sume the boundaries of the physical space to be known beforehand and that this space is convex and free of obstacles. In my Ph.D. work, I will first look into combining the existing redirection meth-ods in a known tracking space to maximize the walking distances that multi-users can navigate without colliding. In a subsequent step, I will extend these methods to an unknown and non-convex physical space. To discover and thus expand the available physical space, I will look into various exploration strategies that allow efficient space discovery. Developing the two previous ideas would only reduce the collision risk, accordingly, resets are still necessary. Hence, I will further investigate new reset strategies based on path prediction that allow potentially resetting users in early stages before they are even close to obstacles or boundaries, strategically reducing future resets.
Exploring the Display Patterns of Object-Centered User Interface in Head-Worn Mixed Reality Environment

Object-centered user interface (UI), which UI displayed around real-world objects provides convenience for users to interact with real objects in head-worn Mixed Reality (MR) environment. However, it remains unclear how to design the object-centered UI to reduce the interference of always displayed UI. In this research, we designed two display patterns of object-centered UI and compared them with the basic object-centered UI without any display patterns. Our results demonstrate the trade-offs among the three UIs and collect user preference. Both display patterns can provide better support for users while reducing the occlusion and interference of the UI.
eXtended Reality Vest: A New Approach to Demonstration-Based Learning

This study examines the design and usability of a new extended reality (XR) training device, XR Vest, which enhances demonstration-based training (DBT) by combining two viewpoints (first- and third-person views). Traditional DBT methods can lack engagement and pose hazards, leading to poor retention. XR technology is used to improve engagement, safety, and immersion. The XR Vest, worn by a trainer, allows for a first-person view of immersive XR environments on an integrated screen while also displaying the trainer's movements in third-person. 28 participants completed training sessions using the XR Vest and a computer monitor. NASA Task Load Index questionnaires and System Usability Scale questionnaires were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the XR Vest. Results showed the XR Vest decreased cognitive load and improved usability. Further research should investigate the benefits of this design in other areas using XR technology for DBT.
Simulating Location-Based Experiences in VR

This research is a collaboration with Aardman Animations, a world-renowned animation studio to innovate their linear storytelling into a real-time, interactive and spatially immersive experience. We developed a room-scale VR experience to simulate the installation in order to visualise the projection distortion under different conditions. A study was then conducted using our simulation to investigate the effect of distortion of the projections on the experience of immersion and how three factors effected the distortion. This paper explains the preliminary results and the process.
A Study on Affordable Manipulation in Virtual Reality Simulations: Hand-Tracking versus Controller-Based Interaction

When it comes to Virtual Reality (VR) simulations, controllers are used to interact with the virtual world. However, controllers are an approximation, and a possible alternative is represented by optical hand-tracking. The goal of the present paper is to compare the two solutions to investigate the best way to implement interactions in VR. Results showed that, despite its limitations, hand-tracking enables realistic interactions that are more consistent with the real world.
[DC] Fostering Well-Being with Virtual Reality Applications

My research focuses on how mental health and well-being can be supported by Virtual Reality (VR) interventions. In particular, as a first step in my research, I identified three main research gaps. In my PhD, I design, develop and evaluate VR prototypes, and derive specific design recommendations for VR interventions that aim to improve well-being. In particular I explore how VR can effectively i) provide autonomy to users, e.g. for emotional expression, ii) can combine cognitive and affective approaches to foster understanding of health as a holistic concept, e.g. through metaphoric visualisation of health data, and iii) provide guidance when reflecting and practising well-being strategies.
Augmented Reality for Medical Training in Eastern Africa

Access to qualified medical care is severely limited in low-resource areas within East Africa. Technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) have been shown to be useful for medical teaching and guidance and may contribute to the training of medical experts in these countries. While still expensive, AR has low infrastructure requirements like cell phones, where ownership has constantly increased over the last few years. However, AR is mainly tested for training and surgical applications in highly developed environments. In this study, we tested whether AR can also address the needs for healthcare and medical education in East Africa. Our study consisted of a medical need-finding part and a pilot study to address some of these needs with AR. Our study shows that remote teaching via AR led to significantly higher test score gains and more consistent results than in the in-person control group.
25 years so far: Lessons from a Large Scale Immersive Visualization Facility

This article reflects on the challenges and successes of providing cutting-edge immersive visualization facilities for a variety of academic users. For over 25 years, the University Visualization and Animation Group (now Advanced Research Computing) has provided cyberinfrastructure and support for designers, engineers, and scientists with data and visualization needs. We consider the history and evolution of these services and inventory several aspects of their research and educational impact. While there are many other examples of successful installations, we present evidence demonstrating the cross-cutting value of these institutional cyberinfrastructure resources and prospectives for future research.
A Graph-based Error Correction Model Using Lie-algebraic Cohomology and Its Application on Global Consistent Indoor Scene Reconstruction

We present a novel, effective method for global indoor scene reconstruction problems by geometric topology. Based on point cloud pairwise registration methods (e.g ICP) or IMU, we focus on the problem of accumulated error for the composition of transformations along any loops. The major technical contribution of this paper is a linear method for the graph optimation, using only solving a Poisson equation. We demonstrate the consistency of our method from Hodge-Helmhotz decomposition theorem and experiments on multiple RGBD datasets of indoor scene. The experimental results also demonstrate that our global registration method runs quickly and provides accurate reconstructions.
Campus Visualization Centers: Reflecting and Projecting

The Villanova CAVE was established under the auspices of the school's Center of Excellence in Enterprise Technology in 2014. Over the following nine years the facility and the Center have experienced several successes and challenges in supporting research and teaching with VR on campus. This paper reviews the Center's work with the CAVE as a large-scale facility and its strategies for promoting VR and visualization. It concludes with some challenges for both HMD-based facilities and large scale facilities.
Enhanced Surgeons: Understanding the Design of Augmented Reality Instructions for Keyhole Surgery

It is important to understand how to design AR content for surgical contexts to mitigate the risk of distracting the surgeons. In this work, we test information overlays for AR guidance during keyhole surgery. We performed a preliminary evaluation of a prototype, focusing on the effects of colour, opacity, and information representation. Our work contributes insights into the design of AR guidance in surgery settings and a foundation for future research on visualisation design for surgical AR.
Spatially Augmented Reality on Non-rigid Dynamic Surfaces

We will demonstrate a spatially augmented reality system on nonrigid dynamic surfaces like stretchable fabrics. Using a single projector and RGB-D camera, our system adapts the projection to the changing shape of the non-rigid surface automatically. Such systems have applications in various domains such as art, design, entertainment and medicine. In particular, we we will demonstrate the use of the system as a surgical guidance system for cleft palate surgery using a Simulare cleft model.
Effects of Walking Together in a Co-Located Virtual Reality Game

This paper details a within-subjects study exploring how two lo-comotion techniques affect players' experiences while playing a co-located virtual reality (VR) game. The participants played a two-versus-two game, reminiscent of laser tag, in a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$14\mathrm{m}\times 14\mathrm{m}$</tex> arena, and they moved around in the arena either by physically walking or by using VR controller while standing. When walking, participants reported significantly higher social presence directed at their team-mates and significantly lower simulator sickness. Moreover, they found walking significantly more natural, they were significantly more likely to forget that they were using controllers, and they were significantly more concerned with keeping distance to other players.
Tell Me Where To Go: Voice-Controlled Hands-Free Locomotion for Virtual Reality Systems

As locomotion is an important factor in improving Virtual Reality (VR) immersion and usability, research in this area has been and continues to be a crucial aspect for the success of VR applications. In recent years, a variety of techniques have been developed and evaluated, ranging from abstract control, vehicle, and teleportation techniques to more realistic techniques such as motion, gestures, and gaze. However, when it comes to hands-free scenarios, for example to increase the overall accessibility of an application or in medical scenarios under sterile conditions, most of the announced techniques cannot be applied. This is where the use of speech as an intuitive means of navigation comes in handy. As systems become more capable of understanding and producing speech, voice interfaces become a valuable alternative for input on all types of devices. This takes the quality of hands-free interaction to a new level. However, intuitive user-assisted speech interaction is difficult to realize due to semantic ambiguities in natural language utterances as well as the high real-time requirements of these systems. In this paper, we investigate steering-based locomotion and selection-based locomotion using three speech-based, hands-free methods and compare them with leaning as an established alternative. Our results show that landmark-based locomotion is a convenient, fast, and intuitive way to move between locations in a VR scene. Furthermore, we show that in scenarios where landmarks are not available, number grid-based navigation is a successful solution. Based on this, we conclude that speech is a suitable alternative in hands-free scenar-ios, and exciting ideas are emerging for future work focused on developing hands-free ad hoc navigation systems for scenes where landmarks do not exist or are difficult to articulate or recognize.
An Image-Space Split-Rendering Approach to Accelerate Low-Powered Virtual Reality

Current mobile GPUs lack the computing power needed to support high end VR rendering. As an alternative, frames can be rendered on a server and streamed to a thin client, but this approach can incur high end-to-end latency due to processing and network requirements. We propose a networked split-rendering approach using an image-space division of labour between a server and a heavy client to achieve faster end-to-end image presentation rates on the mobile device while preserving image quality.
Interactive Spatialized Animations in “The Wedding Chamber Project” as a Methodology to Produce Phenomenological Diegetic Renderings Inside an XR Immersive Environment

Animation inside an XR immersive world nowadays implies a strong assertion of what a relatively old media transfigures within a new one. The Extended Reality computing environment becomes the emerging framework and catalyst where animated narratives can construct a spatialized layer of meaningful diegetic experiences revamping on a strong basis what interactivity means for users. In this short paper, these insights are exposed, analyzed, and discussed from the computing, artistic, and interdisciplinary perspectives, referring to “The Wedding Chamber”, an XR project in progress that articulates an experimental way of playing animation to produce knowledge through an interactive methodology
Virtual Reality in Supporting Charitable Giving: The Role of Vicarious Experience, Existential Guilt, and Need for Stimulation

Although a growing number of charities have used virtual reality (VR) technology for fundraising activities, with better results than ever before, little research has been undertaken on what factors make VR beneficial in supporting charitable giving. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the underlying mechanism of VR in supporting charitable giving, which extends the current literature on VR and donation behaviors. The findings of this study indicated that VR charitable appeals increase actual money donations when compared to the traditional two-dimensional (2D) format and that this effect is achieved through a serial mediating effect of vicarious experience and existential guilt. Findings also identify the need for stimulation as a boundary condition, indicating that those with a higher (vs. lower) need for stimulation were more (vs. less) affected by the mediating mechanism of VR charitable appeals on donations. This work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between VR technology and charitable giving, as well as to future research on VR and its prosocial applications.
Facilitating Asymmetric Interaction between VR Users and External Users via Wearable Gesture-Based Interface

Head-mounted displays (HMDs) create a highly immersive experience, while limit VR users' awareness of external users that co-located in the same environment. Previous studies generate various asymmetric communication that allowing external users to collaborate with VR users. In our work, we designed a wearable gesture-based interface for external users in two main asymmetric VR scenarios: (1) Object Transition and (2) Collaborative Game. We conducted a hybrid user study with twenty participants to compare the gesture-based interaction and controller-based interaction to investigate the effects on VR experience, social presence, and collaborative efficiency for external users. Our study revealed that the participants in gesture-based interaction received more positive feedbacks compared to those in controller-based interaction. Our findings suggested that the gesture-based interaction could be adapted for future asymmetric VR experience.
Exploring Industrial Uses of Virtually Altering the Physical World

Plausible physical-virtual interaction is key to contextual coherence in a world mixed with physical and virtual contents. One way to achieve it is to virtually simulate the interactions, particularly, the physical reactions to virtual actions. In this paper, we describe what virtually altering physical objects means and how it differs from or relates to Augmented Reality, Diminished Reality, Mixed Reality, and digital twins. We also summarize its characteristics and possible industrial use cases through a literature review and ten expert interviews. We hope this work could help promote the industrial development and use of virtual illusions that simulate transformations of the physical world.
Real-time Hand-object Occlusion for Augmented Reality Using Hand Segmentation and Depth Correction

Hand-object occlusion is crucial to enhance the realism of Aug-mented Reality, especially for egocentric hand-object interaction scenes. In this paper, a hand segmentation-based depth correction approach is proposed, which can help to realize real-time hand-object occlusion. We introduce a lightweight convolutional neural net-work to quickly obtain real hand segmentation mask. Based on the hand mask, different strategies are adopted to correct the depth data of hand and non-hand regions, which can implement hand-object occlusion and object-object occlusion simultaneously to deal with complex hand situations during interaction. The experimental re-sults demonstrate the feasibility of our approach presenting visually appealing occlusion effects.