Related papers: ENI: Quantifying Environment Compatibility for Nat…
Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a research platform for investigating human responses to environmental variables. While VR provides tremendous advantages in terms of variable isolation and manipulation, and ease of…
We present a novel redirected walking controller based on alignment that allows the user to explore large and complex virtual environments, while minimizing the number of collisions with obstacles in the physical environment. Our…
Social navigation research is performed on a variety of robotic platforms, scenarios, and environments. Making comparisons between navigation algorithms is challenging because of the effort involved in building these systems and the…
Mobile navigation apps are among the most used mobile applications and are often used as a baseline to evaluate new mobile navigation technologies in field studies. As field studies often introduce external factors that are hard to control…
In this study, we compare the virtual and real gait parameters to investigate the effect of appearances of embodied avatars and virtual reality experience on gait in physical and virtual environments. We developed a virtual environment…
Metric ground navigation addresses the problem of autonomously moving a robot from one point to another in an obstacle-occupied planar environment in a collision-free manner. It is one of the most fundamental capabilities of intelligent…
This paper presents a wearable assistive device with the shape of a pair of eyeglasses that allows visually impaired people to navigate safely and quickly in unfamiliar environment, as well as perceive the complicated environment to…
Safe visual navigation is critical for indoor mobile robots operating in cluttered environments. Existing benchmarks, however, often neglect collisions or are designed for outdoor scenarios, making them unsuitable for indoor visual…
Unfamiliar, large-scale virtual environments are difficult to navigate. This paper presents design guidelines to ease navigation in such virtual environments. The guidelines presented here focus on the design and placement of landmarks in…
The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of several auditory feedback modalities on gait (i.e., walking patterns) in virtual reality (VR). Prior research has substantiated gait disturbances in VR users as one of the primary…
Traditional urban planning methodologies often fail to capture the complexity of contemporary urbanization and environmental sustainability challenges. This study investigates the integration of Generative Design, Virtual Reality (VR), and…
We developed a novel assessment platform with untethered virtual reality, 3-dimensional sounds, and pressure sensing floor mat to help assess the walking balance and negotiation of obstacles given diverse sensory load and/or cognitive load.…
This paper presents a novel multimodal perception system for a real open environment. The proposed system includes an embedded computation platform, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, GPS, and IMU devices. Unlike the traditional frameworks, our…
How can a robot navigate successfully in rich and diverse environments, indoors or outdoors, along office corridors or trails on the grassland, on the flat ground or the staircase? To this end, this work aims to address three challenges:…
Millions of blind and visually-impaired (BVI) people navigate urban environments every day, using smartphones for high-level path-planning and white canes or guide dogs for local information. However, many BVI people still struggle to…
We propose an efficient algorithm to visualise symmetries in neural networks. Typically, models are defined with respect to a parameter space, where non-equal parameters can produce the same input-output map. Our proposed method, GENNI,…
Navigating our physical environment requires changing directions and turning. Despite its ecological importance, we do not have a unified theoretical account of non-straight-line human movement. Here, we present a unified optimality…
We present results from a set of experiments in this pilot study to investigate the causal influence of user activity on various environmental parameters monitored by occupant carried multi-purpose sensors. Hypotheses with respect to each…
Over 43 million people worldwide live with severe visual impairment, facing significant challenges in navigating unfamiliar environments. We present MR.NAVI, a mixed reality system that enhances spatial awareness for visually impaired users…
Ensuring safe and inclusive mobility for vulnerable older adults is an emerging priority in urban planning. However, existing data sources such as surveys or GIS-based audits provide limited insight into how micro-scale built environment…