Head-Mounted VR Navigation Using Body Lean to Reduce Motion Sickness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current handheld computing devices face challenges in navigating multi-dimensional virtual spaces, as they lack intuitive methods for controlling both location and orientation, leading to impractical physical locomotion and limited proprioceptive feedback, making it difficult for users to navigate architectural scale manifold vista virtual environments.
Innovation Solution
The development of a system that uses a handheld computing device to integrate ordinary locomotion, orientation, and stabilization gestures to navigate polylinear audio and video streams in a virtual environment, providing proprioceptive feedback without the need for buttons, keyboards, joysticks, or touchscreens, by mapping device posture and motion to virtual camera movements and audio spatialization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional handheld computing devices are used for navigating virtual spaces, then basic control functions are available, but intuitive control of location and orientation is lacking, requiring impractical physical locomotion
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical control interfaces (buttons, keyboards, joysticks, touchscreens) with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that detects natural body movements and gestures. This substitution enables intuitive control of virtual camera location and orientation through physical gestures like pointing and hand movements, eliminating the need for impractical physical locomotion while maintaining basic control functions.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the control parameters from discrete button presses to continuous spatial gestures detected by the IMU. By mapping three-dimensional hand gestures and body movements to virtual camera control parameters, the system achieves intuitive control of location and orientation, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and device complexity.
2Measurement precision
If physical locomotion is used to navigate virtual environments, then location control is achieved, but proprioceptive feedback is limited and physical comfort is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent substitutes full-body physical locomotion with localized hand gestures detected by the IMU. Users can control virtual camera movement through pointing gestures and hand movements while remaining physically stationary, thereby maintaining proprioceptive feedback through natural hand-eye coordination without the physical discomfort of sustained locomotion.
Solution Approach 2:
The IMU acts as an intermediary that translates natural hand gestures into virtual camera control commands. This intermediary enables users to maintain comfortable physical posture while achieving precise control of virtual location and orientation through gesture recognition, resolving the contradiction between measurement precision and physical comfort.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple control interfaces (buttons, keyboards, joysticks, touchscreens) are provided, then control functionality is comprehensive, but device complexity and lack of intuitive gestures increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes traditional control interfaces (buttons, keyboards, joysticks, touchscreens) from the device, retaining only the IMU. This extraction maintains comprehensive control functionality through gesture recognition while significantly reducing device complexity by eliminating multiple physical interface elements.
Solution Approach 2:
The IMU serves as a universal control interface that can detect various types of gestures (pointing, hand movements, body orientation) to control multiple aspects of the virtual environment (camera location, orientation, audio spatialization). This multi-functional approach maintains comprehensive control capabilities while reducing the number of separate interface elements needed.
Data Source
AI summary
Locomotion-based motion sickness has long been a complaint amongst virtual reality gamers and drone pilots. Traditional head-mounted display experiences require a handheld controller (e.g. thumbstick, touchpad, gamepad, keyboard, etc.) for locomotion. Teleportation compromises immersive presence and smooth navigation leads to sensory imbalances that can cause dizziness and nausea (even when using room-scale sensor systems). Designers have therefore had to choose between comfort and immersion. The invention is a hands-free, body-based navigation technology that puts the participant's body in direct control of movement through virtual space. Participants lean forward to advance in space; lean back to reverse; tip left or right to strafe/sidestep; and rotate to look around. In some embodiments, the more a participant leans, the faster they go. Because the interactions were designed to respond to natural bearing and balancing instincts, movement coordination is intuitive and vection-based cybersickness is reduced.