User Redirection and Alignment for Virtual Reality Experiences in Arbitrary Physical Spaces

Abstract

One of the most daunting problems virtual reality researchers face is how the user navigates the virtual environment, particularly when it is larger than the tracked physical environment. Natural locomotion, or walking, has been shown to have several benefits compared to other navigation techniques but is restricted by the physical environment size and layout. Redirected walking is a technique that enables natural locomotion within a virtual environment that is larger than the available physical space by introducing unnoticeable discrepancies between the user's physical and virtual movements. Redirected walking algorithms can use these discrepancies to map a virtual path onto a more compressed physical path, effectively increasing the size of the physical environment. However, redirected walking still has several shortcomings that prevent it from being used widely outside of academia. The work in this dissertation represents several novel frameworks and methodologies that push the envelope and change how we think about redirected walking. In total, this dissertation presents five significant contributions to the existing body of redirected walking research. These contributions represent new directions in redirected walking research and create a solid foundation for later work. Finally, I discuss the implications of these contributions on redirected walking research moving forward, and I outline several related research vectors for future researchers to develop.