In this contribution we present the results of a pilot study in which an Extended Range Telepresence System is used to calibrate parameters of a pedestrian model for simulation. The parameters control a model element that is intended to make simulated agents walk in the direction of the estimated smallest remaining travel time. We use this to, first, show that that an Extended Range Telepresence System can serve for such a task in general and second to actually find simulation parameters that yield realistic results.

Abstract-Extended range telepresence aims at enabling a user to experience virtual or remote environments, taking his own body movements as an input to define walking speed and viewing direction. Therefore, localization and tracking of the user's pose (position and orientation) is necessary to perform a body-centered scene rendering. Visual and acoustic feedback is provided to the user by a head mounted display (HMD). To allow for free movement within the user environment, the tracking system is supposed to be user-wearable and entirely wireless. Consequently, a lightweight design is presented featuring small dimensions to fit into a conventional 13" laptop backpack, which satisfies the above stated demands for highly immersive extended range telepresence scenarios. Dedicated embedded hardware combined with off-the-shelf components is employed to form a robust, low-cost telepresence system that can be easily installed in any living room.

Abstract:In this contribution, we propose a new framework to evaluate pedestrian simulations by using Extended Range Telepresence. Telepresence is used as a virtual reality walking simulator, which provides the user with a realistic impression of being present and walking in a virtual environment that is much larger than the real physical environment, in which the user actually walks. The validation of the simulation is performed by comparing motion data of the telepresent user with simulated data at some points of the simulation. The use of haptic feedback from the simulation makes the framework suitable for training in emergency situations.

In this work, we propose a plenhaptic guidance function that systematically describes the haptic information for guiding the user in the target environment. The plenhaptic guidance function defines the strength of the guidance at any position in space, at any direction, and at any time, and takes the geometry of the target environment as well as all possible goals into account. The plenhaptic guidance function, which can be rendered as active and passive guidance, is sampled and displayed to the user through a haptic interface in the user environment. The benefits of the plenhaptic guidance function for guiding the user to several simultaneous goals while avoiding the obstacles in a large target environment are demonstrated in real experiments.

A combination of a telepresence system and a microscopic traffic simulator is introduced. It is evaluated using a hotel evacuation scenario. Four different kinds of supporting information are compared, standard exit signs, floor plans with indicated exit routes, guiding lines on the floor and simulated agents leading the way. The results indicate that guiding lines are the most efficient way to support an evacuation but the natural behavior of following others comes very close. On another level the results are consistent with previously performed real and virtual experiments and validate the use of a telepresence system in evacuation studies. It is shown that using a microscopic traffic simulator extends the possibilities for evaluation, e.g. by adding simulated humans to the environment.Comment: Preprint of TGF11 (Traffic and Granular Flow, Moscow, September 2011) conference proceedings contributio