Manipulation Performance in Interactive Virtual Environments

Abstract

We studied manipulation performance in virtual environments using two types of controllers: virtual hand control and three-dimensional (3D) mouse/cursor control. These manipulation methods were tested under monoscopic and stereoscopic viewing conditions. Participants were asked to discriminate, grasp, pitch, roll, and position virtual objects. Speed and accuracy of manipulation tasks were measured. Virtual hand control proved to be significantly faster and more accurate than 3D mouse cursor control. Participants made more head movements in the virtual hand condition than in the mouse-cursor condition. Further, it was shown that the speed and accuracy of manipulations are much improved under stereoscopic viewing conditions. Actual or potential applications of this research include virtual training environments (assembly, maintenance, etc.) virtual prototyping, teleoperations, and so forth.