ARC: Alignment-based Redirection Controller for Redirected Walking in Complex Environments.

Area of Science:

• Virtual Reality (VR)
• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
• Robotics and Control Systems

Background:

• Exploring large virtual environments in VR is challenging due to physical space limitations.
• Current redirected walking techniques struggle with complex environments and collision avoidance.
• A need exists for robust controllers that enhance VR immersion without physical collisions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel alignment-based redirection controller (ARC) for virtual reality.
• To enable users to explore complex virtual environments with minimal physical collisions.
• To introduce a new metric, Complexity Ratio (CR), for quantifying environmental complexity.

Main Methods:

• Developed an alignment-based redirection controller (ARC) that matches physical and virtual obstacle proximity.
• Introduced the Complexity Ratio (CR) metric to assess navigational complexity differences.
• Conducted extensive simulation-based experiments and implemented the controller on an Oculus Quest headset.

Main Results:

• ARC significantly outperforms state-of-the-art controllers in achieving collision-free paths.
• The controller demonstrates robustness in complex environments with numerous obstacles.
• Quantitative and qualitative evaluations confirm ARC's effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• ARC offers a novel and effective solution for redirected walking in virtual reality.
• The controller enhances user experience by allowing extensive exploration of complex virtual spaces.
• ARC is applicable to arbitrary environments and requires no user input or parameter tuning.