We present an assessment of asymmetric interactions in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs). In our asymmetric setup, two co-located users interact with virtual 3D objects, one in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) and the other in mobile Augmented Reality (AR). We conducted a study with 36 participants to evaluate performance and collaboration aspects of pair work, and compare it with two symmetric scenarios, either with both users in immersive VR or mobile AR. To perform this experiment, we adopt a collaborative AR manipulation technique from literature and develop and evaluate a VR manipulation technique of our own. Our results indicate that pairs in asymmetric VR-AR achieved significantly better performance than the AR symmetric condition, and similar performance to VR symmetric. Regardless of the condition, pairs had similar work participation indicating a high cooperation level even when there is a visualization and interaction asymmetry between the participants.

High-speed broadband networks will enable public-safety organizations to handle critical situations that go beyond the common voice communication channel. In this paper, we present a user-centered approach that makes the deployment and adoption of next-generation user interfaces reflect the first responders' needs, requirements, and contexts of use. It is composed of four phases where we elicit requirements, iteratively prototype user interfaces, and evaluate our designs. In this process, public-safety organizations are always engaged, contributing through their feedback and evaluation. We will use immersive Virtual Reality to simulate the user interface designs. Within the virtual environment, it is possible to prototype several concepts before committing to a definitive interface. The solutions proposed will be instrumental for the adoption of next-generation user interfaces by the public safety community.

We present the design of a handheld-based interface for collaborative manipulations of 3D objects in mobile augmented reality. Our approach combines touch gestures and device movements for fast and precise control of 7-DOF transformations. Moreover, the interface creates a shared medium where several users can interact through their point-of-view and simultaneously manipulate 3D virtual augmentations. We evaluated our collaborative solution in two parts. First, we assessed our interface in single user mode, comparing the user task performance in three conditions: touch gestures, device movements and hybrid. Then, we conducted a study with 30 participants to understand and classify the strategies that arise while working in pairs, when partners are free to make their task organization. Furthermore, we investigated the effectiveness of simultaneous manipulations compared with the individual approach.

In the context of the 3DUI Contest promoted by the IEEE VR 2018, we propose 3D interaction techniques that address three distinct tasks in a virtual environment setup: climbing a ladder, controlling a quadcopter in a first-person view flight, and building a tower by stacking a series of objects. The interaction techniques were developed so the player, our 3D-athlete, has control over the events in each task, following metaphors that facilitate the use of the interface, and having status and spatial awareness supported by clear feedback cues. Thus, the player should be able to execute the tasks with precision and agility.

Object manipulation in 3D virtual environments demands a combined coordination of rotations, translations and scales, as well as the camera control to change the user's viewpoint. Then, for many manipulation tasks, it would be advantageous to share the interaction complexity among team members. In this paper we propose a novel 3D manipulation interface based on a collaborative action coordination approach. Our technique explores a smartphone -- the touchscreen and inertial sensors -- as input interface, enabling several users to collaboratively manipulate the same virtual object with their own devices. We first assessed our interface design on a docking and an obstacle crossing tasks with teams of two users. Then, we conducted a study with 60 users to understand the influence of group size in collaborative 3D manipulation. We evaluated teams in combinations of one, two, three and four participants. Experimental results show that teamwork increases accuracy when compared with a single user. The accuracy increase is correlated with the number of individuals in the team and their work division strategy.

We explore design approaches for cooperative work in virtual manipulation tasks. We seek to understand the fundamental aspects of the human cooperation and design interfaces and manipulation actions to enhance the group's ability to solve complex manipulation tasks in various immersion scenarios.

We present Disambiguation canvas, a technique for selection by progressive refinement using a mobile device and consisting of two steps. During the first, the user defines a subset of objects through the orientation sensors of the device and a volume-casting pointing technique. The subsequent step consists of the disambiguation of the desired target among the previously-defined subset of objects, and is accomplished using the mobile device touchscreen. By relying on the touchscreen for the last step the user can disambiguate among hundreds of objects at once, previous progressive refinement techniques do not scale as well as ours. Disambiguation canvas is mainly developed for easy, accurate and fast selection of small objects, or objects inside cluttered virtual environments. User tests show that our technique performs faster than ray-casting for targets with ≈ 0.53° of angular size, and is also much more accurate for all the tested target sizes.