Head-Mounted Display Navigating Virtual Environments
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current handheld computing devices face challenges in navigating multi-dimensional virtual spaces, as they lack intuitive control over location and orientation, relying on limited natural gestures and requiring impractical physical locomotion or complex sensor mappings, which hinders seamless navigation and interaction in virtual environments.
Innovation Solution
The development of a system that uses a handheld device to integrate ordinary locomotion, orientation, and stabilization gestures to navigate and explore polylinear audio and video streams in a virtual environment of architectural scale, providing proprioceptive feedback without the need for buttons, keyboards, or touchscreens, by mapping device posture and motion to virtual camera movements and audio spatialization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If complex sensor mappings are used to control virtual navigation, then navigation precision is improved, but device complexity and ease of operation deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces complex mechanical control interfaces (buttons, keyboards, touchscreens) with direct mapping of natural body movements to virtual navigation. The handheld device's motion sensors detect ordinary locomotion and orientation gestures, translating them directly into virtual camera movements and spatial audio changes, eliminating the need for complex sensor mappings while maintaining navigation precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses the participant's own body as the control interface, leveraging natural proprioceptive sense and ordinary gestures for navigation. The device itself provides the mapping functionality through its motion sensors, requiring no external control mechanisms or complex programming from the user.
2Reliability
If physical locomotion is required for virtual navigation, then navigation realism is improved, but practicality and ease of operation deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a virtual copy of physical locomotion experience through sensor-based control. Instead of requiring actual physical movement through space, the system captures the participant's ordinary gestures and body orientation using the handheld device's sensors, then replicates the navigational effect in the virtual environment, maintaining realism without requiring impractical physical locomotion.
3Device complexity
If limited natural gestures are used for control, then device simplicity is improved, but navigation capability and adaptability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the handheld device's motion sensors serve multiple navigation functions simultaneously. The same sensors that detect device orientation also track body movement, and together they control both virtual camera position and audio spatialization, enabling comprehensive navigation capability with a simple, unified control mechanism.
Data Source
AI summary
In some embodiments, a head-mounted display apparatus with a visual display and one or more sensors may make navigation of virtual environments more natural. The invention enables a participant to pivot, tip and aim the apparatus to orient and move through virtual space hands-free.