A framework for assisted exploration with collaboration

Abstract

Figure 1: Assisted collaborative exploration scenario with the leader's guide avatar being a dog, and two groups of following collaborators. Observe that the guide avatar points to objects of interest even if they are not aligned with the direction of locomotion or the observer's ground plane, and that the local leader serves as the guide avatar for all attached followers. AbstractWe approach the problem of exploring a virtual space by exploiting positional and camera-model constraints on navigation to provide extra assistance that focuses the user's explorational wanderings on the task objectives. Our specific design incorporates not only task-based constraints on the viewer's location, gaze, and viewing parameters, but also a personal "guide" that serves two important functions: keeping the user oriented in the navigation space, and "pointing" to interesting subject areas as they are approached. The guide's cues may be ignored by continuing in motion, but if the user stops, the gaze shifts automatically toward whatever the guide was interested in. This design has the serendipitous feature that it automatically incorporates a nested collaborative paradigm simply by allowing any given viewer to be seen as the "guide" of one or more viewers following behind; the leading automated guide (we tend to select a guide dog for this avatar) can remind the leading live human guide of interesting sites to point out, while each real human collaborator down the chain has some choices about whether to follow the local leader's hints. We have chosen VRML as our initial development medium primarily because of its portability, and we have implemented a variety of natural modes for leading and colEmail: fewernert, hansong@cs.indiana.edu laborating, including ways for collaborators to attach to and detach from a particular leader.

Tour generation for exploration of 3D virtual environments

“…Wernert and Hanson [1999] present a taxonomy of assisted navigation, and also discuss a "dog-on-aleash" approach to guidance through a 3D world. This approach is similar to the "river analogy" introduced by Galyean [1995], where the viewpoint is tethered to a vehicle following a path through the virtual environment and some degree of control is retained by the user.…”

Dynamic View Selection for Time-Varying Volumes

“…There is a rich literature in computer graphics and animation about dynamic view selection [20,1,29,9,23]. Applicable techniques range from direct orientation interpolation [20] to complex view planning for complicated 3D scenes.…”

Viewpoint adaptation during navigation based on stimuli from the virtual environment

“…Unless providing precalculated slope information [Wernert and Hanson 1999] or the methods to calculate height information in the virtual environment like [Steed 1997], we simply use the height information provided by the virtual environment and we calculate elevation changes and act upon this information. Together with real-life observations of subjective human exploring behavior, we tackle simulation problems that are largely disregarded by both navigational and behavioral literature, since exploration is a human-directed cognitive process, and not a biological, brain process to be mapped.…”

“…The research that is most related to our work is presented in [Wernert and Hanson 1999]. They use virtual guides and leaders that orient themselves in interest directions, signaling this way to the user possible exploration paths, and the user can choose to follow the suggestions or not.…”

“…All this can happen in fractions of a second, comparable to taking a glimpse out on the side windows while driving, and then maneuvering in the desired direction when some promising item shows up. We also eliminate the navigational constraints (user is within a certain range of guide) and the view obstruction (guide is in the center of the view) of following the guide of [Wernert and Hanson 1999], by incorporating the attention drawer mechanism into the interest objects themselves.…”