Space Perception in Virtual Environments - On how biometric sensing in virtual environments may give architects users's feedback

Abstract

This paper focuses on the objective study of emotions, namely, fear induced by architectural spaces, by sensing and statistically analysing some physiological signals of users experiencing Virtual Environments (VE). For this, a virtual building was designed considering the presence of stairs and ramps as architectural elements that could affect users´physiological states and perception of fear of falling. Thirty-one older persons participated in this study and were assigned to two experimental conditions (i.e., safe and unsafe conditions). Five main locations (beginning of the stairs; neutral room; first descending ramp; ascending ramp; and the middle of ascending ramp) were considered along the participants' path, and heart rate (HR) was collected in the vicinity of those locations. Results shown significant differences in HR activation among neutral, beginning of stairs and middle of ascending ramp. Despite the fact that the effect of condition was not fully verified for HR, participants reported more fear while interacting with the unsafe condition, with significant differences between conditions.

Human perception evaluation system for urban streetscapes based on computer vision algorithms with attention mechanisms

“…Traditionally, the impact of certain classes of objects in street scenes on human cognitive activities has been investigated through small‐scale questionnaire surveys, interviews, sampling surveys, and statistical methods, which necessitate considerable labor and material resources. For instance, Dias, Eloy, Carreiro, Vilar, and Azevedo (2014) designed an experiment that allowed users to experience a virtual environment and statistically analyzed the physical fear of people in real‐life architectural spaces. In another experiment, 170 observers were invited to observe four classes of image in different places, and the participants were asked to divide these places into 10 categories, specifically: “comfortable,” “serious,” “playful,” “active,” “unsafe,” “good,” “tense,” “interesting,” “gloomy,” and “pleasing” (Nelson & Loewen, 1993).…”

How Present am I - Three virtual reality facilities testing the fear of falling

“…The study presented here follows previous ones done by the ISTAR-IUL team. These studies of emotions induced by architectural spaces were conducted by sensing and statistically analysing the physiological signals of users experiencing the virtual environments Dias, Eloy, Carreiro, Proença, et al, 2014;Ourique et al, 2017).…”