How Virtual Hand Representations Affect the Perceptions of Dynamic Affordances in Virtual Reality

Area of Science:

• Virtual Reality (VR) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
• Perception and Embodiment in Virtual Environments.

Background:

• User representations in VR influence virtual experience and interaction.
• Previous research shows static affordances are affected by user representations.
• The impact of end-effector representations on dynamic affordances is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how different virtual end-effector representations affect user perception of dynamic affordances.
• To evaluate the impact of virtual hand representations on performance in a dynamic object retrieval task.

Main Methods:

• A 3 (virtual end-effector representation: Controller, Controller-hand, Glove) x 13 (frequency of moving doors) x 2 (target object size) multi-factorial design was used.
• User performance and calibration were measured in an object retrieval task with dynamic obstacles.
• Three conditions manipulated input modality and virtual end-effector representation.

Main Results:

• The Controller-hand condition (controller input mapped to a virtual hand) showed significantly lower performance than Controller or Glove conditions.
• Users in the Controller-hand condition demonstrated a reduced ability to adapt and improve performance over trials.
• Increased embodiment from hand representations may negatively impact performance or increase workload due to modality mismatch.

Conclusions:

• Virtual hand representations can enhance embodiment but may compromise performance and increase cognitive load.
• VR system designers must balance embodiment goals with application-specific performance requirements.
• Careful consideration of the mapping between input modality and virtual representation is crucial for effective VR design.