Research Objective

The current study set out to determine whether individuals walking in a virtual reality environment pass through apertures made of two avatars differently than apertures created by two pole obstacles, as previously observed between pole and human obstacles in real-world environments.

Methods

Eleven healthy young adults wore a head-mounted virtual reality display, walked along a 10 m path and passed through a virtual aperture located 5 m from the starting location. Participants were instructed to avoid colliding with the obstacles when passing through the aperture. The experiment was conducted in a block design, where the aperture was either created by two pole obstacles or by two avatars. In both conditions, the width of the aperture ranged between 1.0–1.8x each participant’s shoulder width.

Results

Regardless of whether the aperture was created by the virtual poles or the avatars, participants rotated their shoulders for all aperture sizes and results found no significant differences in shoulder rotation angle, onset of rotation, walking speed or velocity at time of crossing between the two types of obstacles. Therefore, it appears that the differences in avoidance behaviours observed in real-world settings between people and pole obstacles is not translated to a virtual reality environment.

Significance

It is possible that during experiments in which the avatars do not move, they do not possess human-like qualities suggested to be responsible for the increased caution used when walking through real human obstacles and instead, are treated as any ordinary obstacle.

中文翻译：

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虚拟环境中的光圈穿越期间，化身是否像人的障碍物一样被对待？

研究目的

当前的研究旨在确定在虚拟现实环境中行走的人是否通过了两个化身所构成的孔，而不是像先前在现实环境中在杆与人之间所观察到的那样，通过了由两个杆状障碍物形成的孔。

方法

11名健康的年轻人戴着头戴式虚拟现实显示器，沿着10 m的路径行走，并穿过距起始位置5 m的虚拟孔径。指示参与者避免通过孔时与障碍物碰撞。该实验以块状设计进行，其中孔口由两个极点障碍物或两个化身创建。在两种情况下，孔的宽度在每个参与者肩膀宽度的1.0–1.8倍之间。

结果

不管光圈是由虚拟杆还是化身创建的，参与者都针对所有光圈大小旋转了肩膀，结果发现两种类型的交叉时肩旋转角，旋转开始，行走速度或速度没有显着差异的障碍。因此，看来在现实环境中观察到的人与杆障碍之间的回避行为差异并未转化为虚拟现实环境。

意义

在化身不动的实验中，它们可能不具有拟人化的特质，被认为是穿越真实人类障碍物时应加倍小心的原因，而被视为任何普通障碍物。