Guillaume Moreau

Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising solution to address the pressing concern of transferring know-how in the manufacturing industry. Making an immersive training experience often involves designing an instrumented replica of a tool whose use is to be learned through virtual training. The process of making a replica can alter its mass, making it different from that of the original tool. As far as we know, the influence of this difference on learning outcomes has never been evaluated. To investigate this subject, an immersive training experience was designed with pre and post-training phases under real conditions, dedicated to learning the use of a rotary tool. 80 participants took part in this study, split into three groups: a control group performing the virtual training using a replica with the same mass as the original tool ($\mathrm{m}=100\%$), a second group that used a replica with a lighter mass than the original tool ($\mathrm{m}= 50\%$) and a third group using a replica heavier than the original tool ($\mathrm{m}=150\%$). Despite variations in the mass of the replica used for training, this study revealed that the learning outcomes remained comparable across all groups, while also demonstrating significant enhancements in certain performance measures, including task completion time. Overall, these findings provide useful insights regarding the design of tool replicas for immersive training.

In this special issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) , we are pleased to present the journal papers from the 22nd IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2023), which will be held as a hybrid conference between October 16 and 20, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. ISMAR continues the over twenty-year long tradition of IWAR, ISMR, and ISAR, and is the premier conference for Mixed and Augmented Reality in the world.

Text entry in Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an increasingly important task as the availability of hardware increases and the range of VR applications widens. This is especially true for VR industrial applications where users need to input data frequently. Large-scale industrial adoption of VR is still hampered by the productivity gap between entering data via a physical keyboard and VR data entry methods. Data entry needs to be efficient, easy-to-use and to learn and not frustrating. In this paper, we present a new data entry method based on handwriting recognition (HWR). Users can input text by simply writing on a virtual surface. We conduct a user study to determine the best writing conditions when it comes to surface orientation and sensory feedback. This feedback consists of visual, haptic, and auditory cues. We find that using a slanted board with sensory feedback is best to maximize writing speeds and minimize physical demand. We also evaluate the performance of our method in terms of text entry speed, error rate, usability and workload. The results show that handwriting in VR has high entry speed, usability with little training compared to other controller-based virtual text entry techniques. The system could be further improved by reducing high error rates through the use of more efficient handwriting recognition tools. In fact, the total error rate is 9.28% in the best condition. After 40 phrases of training, participants reach an average of 14.5 WPM, while a group with high VR familiarity reach 16.16 WPM after the same training. The highest observed textual data entry speed is 21.11 WPM.

Introduction. Les troubles cognitifs induits par des pathologies neurologiques peuvent limiter la participation aux tâches de la vie quotidienne, et plus spécifiquement lors des déplacements en extérieur. Les outils de Réalité augmentée (RA) paraissent prometteurs pour compenser ces difficultés. Objectif. Notre objectif est de faire une analyse des champs d’application existants des outils de RA pour les personnes présentant une affection neurologique. Méthodes. Notre recherche a été effectuée entre août et septembre 2021 dans deux bases de données : Medline et Scopus, à l’aide des mots clés suivants : “augmented reality” AND: “neurological” (et synonymes: “neurology”, “neurologic”), “disorientation”, “mild cognitive”, “aid”, “cognition”. Résultats. Nous avons sélectionné et analysé 13 études. Nos résultats montrent une bonne acceptation du dispositif de RA par les participants. Lors de tâches de déplacements, la majeure partie des participants sont en capacité de terminer seuls la tâche de navigation avec l’aide de l’outil de RA. La notion de charge cognitive qui influence la sécurité de l’utilisateur lorsqu’il utilise la RA est souvent prise en compte dans le développement de ces outils. Conclusion. Les études analysées dans cet article nous permettent de définir un cadre d’utilisation de la RA applicable dès à présent en rééducation et d’envisager son utilisation future dans l’environnement de la personne comme aide technologique pour les déplacements par exemple. Des études complémentaires sur l’impact de la charge cognitive chez les personnes atteintes d’une pathologie neurologique sont à prévoir afin de comparer les résultats obtenus chez des sujets sains.

Wind can influence people’s behavior and their way of inhabiting an architectural or urban space. Furthermore, virtual reality (VR) enables the simulation of different physical and sensitive phenomena such as the wind. We aim to analyze the effects of different wind representations in terms of perception of its properties and sense of presence in VR. We carry out two within-subject studies aiming at evaluating different wind representation suggestions (including audiovisual and tactile stimuli) to identify their effects on wind properties’ perception and sense of presence in the VR scene. Our analysis showed significant effects of tactile restitution over the visual effects used in the study, both for understanding wind properties and for increasing the sense of presence in the VR scene. The tactile condition (T) reduced the estimation error of wind direction by 27% compared to the visual condition (V). The wind force error was reduced by 9.8% using (T) with (V). (T) increased the sense of presence by 12.2% compared to (V). Our second experiment showed an overestimation of the wind force perceived compared to the reference value of the Beaufort scale. For the maximum force value evaluated, the average result was 91% higher than the reference value, while for the lower, the average answer was 77% higher than the reference value. Previous studies have evaluated wind rendering in virtual reality, and others have studied the visualization of wind simulation results. To our knowledge, our study is the first to compare the perception of these two types of representations as well as the effects of wind on elements of the context. We also compared the wind perception to a reference-based method, the Beaufort scale.

Technological developments provide solutions to alleviate the tremendous impact on the health and autonomy due to the impact of dementia on navigation abilities. We systematically reviewed the literature on devices tested to provide assistance to people with dementia during indoor, outdoor and virtual navigation (PROSPERO ID number: 215585). Medline and Scopus databases were searched from inception. Our aim was to summarize the results from the literature to guide future developments. Twenty-three articles were included in our study. Three types of information were extracted from these studies. First, the types of navigation advice the devices provided were assessed through: (i) the sensorial modality of presentation, e.g., visual and tactile stimuli, (ii) the navigation content, e.g., landmarks, and (iii) the timing of presentation, e.g., systematically at intersections. Second, we analyzed the technology that the devices were based on, e.g., smartphone. Third, the experimental methodology used to assess the devices and the navigation outcome was evaluated. We report and discuss the results from the literature based on these three main characteristics. Finally, based on these considerations, recommendations are drawn, challenges are identified and potential solutions are suggested. Augmented reality-based devices, intelligent tutoring systems and social support should particularly further be explored.