Virtual Environments Technology for Training (VETT)

This work is being conducted within Virtual Environment Technology for Training (VETT), a large inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional program which is studying the use of virtual environment (VE) technology to improve Navy training. At RLE, two mutually supporting components of this program are being pursued: (1) Enabling Research on the Human Operator (ERHO) and (2) Development of haptic interfaces and multimodal virtual environments. The ERHO component is concerned with how human perception and performance in virtual environments (VEs) depend upon (1) the physical characteristics of the VE system, (2) the task being performed, and (3) the user's experience with the system and the task. To the extent that the ERHO research is successful, the results will not only provide important information for the design and evaluation of VE training systems, but also for VE systems in general. The second component is focussed on the development of haptic interfaces that enable the user to touch, feel and manipulate objects in VEs. Software is being developed to generate haptic stimuli and to integrate visual, auditory, and haptic displays. Experiments on multimodal illusions due to interactions between haptic and visual or auditory displays have also been conducted.

Over the past year, we have upgraded the hardware for several of our VE systems, developed new software for graphical and haptic rendering, and conducted several suites of experiments for gaining insight on human operator’s perception and performance in VEs. Our progress is described in the following subsections.

Visual Perception in VEs
Background in this area is available in RLE Annual Report 141, pp 337-338 (also see V. Wiegand et al, 1999). During the past year, attention in this area has been focused on further data analysis and the preparation of results for publication. A paper was published on our Motion Parallax research in the journal Presence during this reporting period (Yuan et al, 2000). This work is concerned with the degradations that occur on lead-motion-parallax depth perception when there are time delays between head movements and image displays. The paper completely describes the experiment, data analysis, and results of the past year. A second paper was submitted to the journal Perception and Psychophysics in January of 2001 (Schloerb and Durlach) related to our work on enhanced stereoscopic depth perception in VEs. This work studied the effects of expanded (supernormal) interocular distances.

Part-Tasks Trainer for Position-Velocity Transformations
Experiments in the area of Naval Part Task Trainers have been completed. The PC-based part-task trainer for training individuals to rapidly and accurately estimate relative motion from information on absolute motion (and vice versa) was used to collect data on 22 subjects. Learning curves were measured for a variety of tasks and instructional formats. Both response time and accuracy of response were measured for all tests. We are in the process of analyzing the data and writing a report.