I feel a moving crowd surrounds me: Exploring tactile feedback during immersive walking in a virtual crowd

Abstract

The aim of our study was to investigate whether different tactile feedback conditions could affect the behavior of participants who were instructed to walk within a virtual reality environment surrounded by a virtual crowd of people. A road crossing scenario that takes place in a virtual metropolitan city was developed for this study. Participants were asked to walk toward the opposite sidewalk while wearing a tactile vest. At each road crossing, one of several tactile feedback conditions was generated, including No Tactile, Side Tactile, Back Tactile, Front Tactile, Accurate Tactile, and Random Tactile. During the virtual road crossing, the movement of the participants was captured, and movement‐related measurements were extracted and analyzed to evaluate the effects of tactile feedback on the participant's movement behavior. Additional data were collected through the distribution of a questionnaire to consider self‐reported ratings of the experimental conditions. The results revealed that tactile feedback conditions had significant effects on movement behavior, while the participants' ratings also indicated that they were affected by the tactile feedback conditions. We found that when the participants were immersed in a high‐density crowd simulation, they became sensitive to tactile feedback. However, they were not able to distinguish between the accurate feedback and the random feedback.

Toward understanding embodied human‐virtual character interaction through virtual and tactile hugging

“…Enhancement of a body ownership illusion is achieved when the tactile feedback is deemed realistic and accurate; otherwise, the participants tended to ignore it and focused more on the visual information and the task they were instructed to perform. 37 Thus, even though pseudo-physical embodiment could affect some somatic sensations to the participants (e.g., the sense of touch), it is difficult to accurately replicate a more engaging and emotionally loaded real-world experience, such as hugging. Finally, we should also consider the inability of the Kinect sensor to capture participants' movement accurately.…”

“…We used a commercially available tactile vest in our experimental study to create the hugging sensation for our participants. These vests have been used in various studies investigating interactions with virtual characters, 29,37 training, 38 medicine, 39 rehabilitation, 40 and serious games. 41 However, it is not yet known whether these vests could induce the hugging sensation.…”

A history of crowd simulation: the past, evolution, and new perspectives

“…Besides, authors propose methods to individualize agents into the crowd, as for instance providing door and doorway etiquette [38], distracted agents [49], providing agents which motion is impacted by fluid forces [91] and obeying social distance in pandemic situations [44]. We also saw papers mixing crowds in VR environments, as proposed by [102], where authors study the effects on users during interaction with a virtual human crowd in an immersive virtual reality environment or still exploring tactile feedback during immersive walking in VR applications [48].…”

Flexible electronics with dynamic interfaces for biomedical monitoring, stimulation, and characterization

“…24,35,56 Combining the soft bioelectronic platforms with dynamic actuators tuned to the sensitivity of the skin tissue layers yields an emerging class of bioelectronics with stimulation capabilities for applications that range from prosthetics 57 to entertainment. 58 Despite being the largest organ in the body, the skin remains relatively unexplored as compared with visual and auditive feedback in human-machine interfaces. 59 For motion rehabilitation, training, and therapy with prosthetic devices, tactile feedback can restore a level of "sensation" for the users thus enhancing the virtual/augmented reality experience.…”

“…The recent widespread adoption of wearable electronics as sensing/monitoring platforms pioneered the exploration of skin stimulation 55 and achieved human–machine interfaces 24,35,56 . Combining the soft bioelectronic platforms with dynamic actuators tuned to the sensitivity of the skin tissue layers yields an emerging class of bioelectronics with stimulation capabilities for applications that range from prosthetics 57 to entertainment 58 . Despite being the largest organ in the body, the skin remains relatively unexplored as compared with visual and auditive feedback in human–machine interfaces 59 .…”