International audience

International audience

This study investigates the effectiveness of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) compared to traditional slideshow lessons in teaching implicit knowledge. For this purpose, the research focuses on professional decision-making skills in viticulture. Most existing research on immersive learning concentrates on explicit learning strategies. In contrast, this study explores the potential of IVR to foster the transfer of implicit knowledge to real-world situations.Forty third-year engineering students were randomly assigned to an IVR or a traditional slideshow group. They learned to assess vine vigour through an implicit learning phase, followed by a real-world evaluation in an actual vineyard. Learning outcomes were measured by decision-making accuracy, response time, and intrinsic motivation.The findings show that the IVR group did not significantly outperform the slideshow group in decision-making accuracy. However, the IVR group took more time to make decisions. This observation suggests an impact of immersion during the transfer to real-world situations. Additionally, the IVR group showed a higher level of intrinsic motivation than the slideshow group.These results suggest that although the immersion effect does not directly enhance learning outcomes for this cognitive objective, it does affect how knowledge is transferred to the real world. They also confirm that the positive impact of immersion is difficult to generalize and may depend on the nature of the knowledge. Still, the immersion effect significantly improves learner motivation. This consistent finding could be a key factor in long-term educational success. Further research exploring the nuanced effects of immersion on different learning strategies and educational objectives could offer new practical perspectives for the future of educational technologies.

This 30-minute conference delves into the remarkable story of Laval, a small French town that emerged as a global center for research and development in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Since the inception of Laval Virtual in 1999, this event has been pivotal in bringing together pioneers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts of interactive and immersive technologies from around the globe.

Creativity Support Tools (CSTs), like sketching tools, enable designers in their creative activities. As designers may have different needs during different thinking phases, accessing physiological responses in real-time would enable CSTs to better adapt to these different phases. Several studies have focused on either different phases on the same tool or the same phase on different tools. We investigate ways to discriminate divergent and convergent thinking phases using physiological response. We replicated the same experiment with thirty participants each on two different CSTs: in immersive virtual reality and on an interactive whiteboard (2D). We analyzed Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) during a divergent thinking task followed by a convergent thinking task. Our results revealed significant changes in arousal, measured through HRV and GSR, which seem specific to each creative thinking phase. We discuss how each phase can be linked with specific reactions independently of the CST. We suggest that it may be possible to detect a favorable creative state depending on the task being performed.

Studies involving collaboration in groups are frequently carried out under symmetrical conditions, meaning that all team members have the same role at the same time. In Virtual Reality, symmetrical collaboration often seems attractive as it allows all participants to be included in the VR environment, but it is not clear whether this provides any benefits over asymmetric forms of collaboration, such as when some team members are in VR while others are working on laptops. We conducted a study to compare the conditions of symmetric configurations (both team members use VR) and asymmetric configurations (one member in VR, and the other uses a laptop) when two participants performed a creativity task together. We found that there were differences in participant behaviour and the ideas generated. We conclude by proposing guidelines for future work in the area, particularly related to the use of Virtual Reality for creativity workshops.

Virtual reality (VR) provides users with the ability to substitute their physical appearance by embodying virtual characters (avatars) using head-mounted displays and motion-capture technologies. Previous research demonstrated that the sense of embodiment toward an avatar can impact user behavior and cognition. In this paper, we present an experiment designed to investigate whether embodying a well-known creative genius could enhance participants' creative performance. Following a preliminary online survey ( N = 157) to select a famous character suited to the purpose of this study, we developed a VR application allowing participants to embody Leonardo da Vinci or a self-avatar. Self-avatars were approximately matched with participants in terms of skin tone and morphology. 40 participants took part in three tasks seamlessly integrated in a virtual workshop. The first task was based on a Guilford's Alternate Uses test (GAU) to assess participants' divergent abilities in terms of fluency and originality. The second task was based on a Remote Associates Test (RAT) to evaluate convergent abilities. Lastly, the third task consisted in designing potential alternative uses of an object displayed in the virtual environment using a 3D sketching tool. Participants embodying Leonardo da Vinci demonstrated significantly higher divergent thinking abilities, with a substantial difference in fluency between the groups. Conversely, participants embodying a self-avatar performed significantly better in the convergent thinking task. Taken together, these results promote the use of our virtual embodiment approach, especially in applications where divergent creativity plays an important role, such as design and innovation.

The emergence and the development of digital technologies (social media, 3D scanners, virtual reality) offer new opportunities to develop more participative design approaches. The present study experiments with non-designer participants a co-creation and co-design process of furniture based on 3D scan, virtual reality sketching, and modeling tools. Questionnaires have been used to measure user experience related to the tools, the quality of co-creation experience and the acceptance of the process. This research validates the relevance of virtual reality in this process and provides some recommendations for the implementation and improvement of this process.

Healthcare simulators are learning environments that offer many training opportunities. The integration of expressive virtual patients in these simulators encourages the exchanges and provokes emotional reactions in the learner, which promotes memorization and learning. Based on these elements, we assume that the facial expressiveness of a virtual agent is a factor to be considered in order to improve the user experience. We investigate the impact of the facial expressiveness of virtual humans on the empathy induction in the user of health simulators. We also investigate the impact of facial expressiveness on the user’s sense of similarity and the affective bond with the agent. Our results show a high empathy score when users train with simulators. Depending on the context, we observe a significant difference in perspective-taking in favor of the users who interact with an expressive virtual agent to a virtual agent without facial expressiveness.

Innovation is defined by a range of activities having different goals but driven by the same purpose. For example, in the ending phases, the aim will be to put forward precise concepts, while upstream of innovation, the activities are defined by the will to investigate the subject and increase the area of knowledge and concepts helpful for the conception of new products. This study takes place in the latter contexts because these are the ones where tools are the most variable and de facto, the least normalised. Our aim was to study user experience felt by the usage of these tools as well as their impact on creativity and ideas’ communicability. To do this, we led an experimental study with 79 participants comparing four tools: pen & paper, Virtual-Reality (VR) drawing, VRCAD, and traditional CAD. Thanks to the UEQ (Laugwitz et al., 2008) and judges method of Cropley and Cropley (2008), we measured the user-exprience and the creativity. Then we compared the level of creativity, user-experience and communicability induced by each tool. The results reveal that the user experience arising from the tool influences the amount and the quality of the ideas. Moreover, we show that the fewer standardises interactions the tools have, the greater the communicability of ideas.

Improving the expressiveness of virtual humans is essential for qualitative interactions and development of an emotional bond. It is certainly indicated for all applications using the user's cognitive processes, such as applications dedicated to training or health. Our study aims to contribute to the design of an expressive virtual human, by identifying and adapting visual factors promoting transcription of emotions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of expressive wrinkles and variation of pupil size. We propose to compare the recognition of basic emotions on a real human and on an expressive virtual human. The virtual human was subject to two different factors: expressive wrinkles and/or pupil size. Our results indicate that emotion recognition rates on the virtual agent are high. Moreover, expressive wrinkles affect emotion recognition. The effect of pupillary size is less significant. However, both are recommended to design an expressive virtual human.

The usage of biofeedback in Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming more and more important in providing fully immersive experiences. With the rapid evolution of physiological monitoring technologies it is important to study how different modalities of biofeedback can alter user experience. While previous studies use biofeedback as an additional interaction mechanic. We created a protocol to assess heart rate control competency and used the results of said protocol to immerse our participants in a VR experience where the biofeedback mechanics are mandatory to complete a game. We observed consistent results between our competency scale and the participants' mastery of the biofeedback game mechanic in the VR experience. We also found that the biofeedback mechanic has a significant impact on engagement.

This paper presents the first study of a series of experiments aiming to investigate the impact of avatar visual fidelity on user experience with emphasis on the sense of embodiment in immersive virtual environments (IVE). This first experiment requires participants to evaluate three characters with several levels of visual fidelity: a robot, a suit and a virtual doppelganger. Statistical analyses were performed to assess the impact of truthfulness (degree of similarity between users and avatars) and self-esteem on perceived avatars' attractiveness. Our results demonstrate the positive impact of truthfulness on the evaluation of attractiveness and suggest a correlation between self-esteem and avatar selection.

International audience

Rewarded at Laval Virtual 2014, the AccesSim project aims to develop a wheelchair simulator based on Virtual Reality (VR) and a dynamic force-feedback platform, which allows to experience and to evaluate the accessibility in complex urban or property environment. In order to address this issue, the dynamic force-feedback platform should provide haptic and vestibular feedback to various user profiles: from town-planners to wheelchair users. The platform needs to be modular and adjustable to each of these profiles. This article focuses on the dynamic force-feedback platform and specifically on the force-feedback systems used.

Journal Article Visual search in dynamic 3D visualisations of unstructured picture collections Get access Olivier Christmann, Olivier Christmann * a Arts et Metiers ParisTech, LAMPA, 2 boulevard du Ronceray, 49000 Angers, France * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses:[email protected], [email protected] (O. Christmann), [email protected] (N. Carbonell), [email protected] (S. Richir). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Noëlle Carbonell, Noëlle Carbonell b Nancy-Université, LORIA, INRIA, BP 239, 54506 Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy Cedex, France Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Simon Richir Simon Richir a Arts et Metiers ParisTech, LAMPA, 2 boulevard du Ronceray, 49000 Angers, France Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Interacting with Computers, Volume 22, Issue 5, September 2010, Pages 399–416, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2010.02.005 Published: 26 February 2010 Article history Received: 15 March 2009 Revision received: 21 February 2010 Accepted: 22 February 2010 Published: 26 February 2010

This paper describes an experiment conducted to study the influence of visual appearance of user's avatar (or 3D cursor) on the manipulation of virtual objects in virtual environments (VE). Participants were asked to pick up a virtual cube and place it at a random location in a VE. We found that one visual property of the avatar (the presence or absence of a directional cue) could influence the way participants picked up the cube in the VE. When using an avatar or a 3D cursor with a strong directional cue (e.g., arrows pointing to the left or right), participants generally picked up the cube by a specific side (e.g., right or left side). When using 3D cursors with no main directional cue, participants more frequently picked up the virtual cube by its front or top

This paper describes a new interaction technique called haptic hybrid rotations to overcome the physical angular limitations of force-feedback devices when manipulating virtual objects. This technique is based on a hybrid control of the object manipulated with the device. When approaching the angular mechanical stops of the device, the control mode switches from angular position-control to rate-control. The forcefeedback of the device is used to simulate the use of an elastic device in the rate-control mode. An experiment was carried out to compare this technique with two other common alternatives that are used when manipulating virtual objects with force-feedback devices: rotations scaling, and the clutching technique. Our results showed that haptic hybrid rotations were both the fastest and the most appreciated technique for the proposed experiment.

This paper describes two psychophysical experiments which were conducted to evaluate the influence of the control/display (C/D) ratio on the perception of mass of manipulated objects in virtual environments (VE). In both experiments, a discrimination task was used in which participants were asked to identify the heavier object between two virtual balls. Participants could weigh each ball via a haptic interface and look at its synthetic display on a computer screen. Unknown to the participants, two parameters varied between each trial: the difference of mass between the balls and the C/D ratio used in the visual display when weighing the comparison ball. The data collected demonstrated that the C/D ratio significantly influenced the result of the mass discrimination task and sometimes even reversed it. The absence of gravity force largely increased this effect. These results suggest that if the visual motion of a manipulated virtual object is amplified when compared to the actual motion of the user's hand (i.e. if the C/D ratio used is smaller than 1), the user tends to feel that the mass of the object decreases. Thus, decreasing or amplifying the motions of the user in a VE can strongly modify the perception of haptic properties of objects that he/she manipulates. Designers of virtual environments could use these results for simplification considerations and also to avoid potential perceptual aberrations.