This study investigates whether the evaluation environment – real world or virtual reality (VR) – influences the evaluation of Presence, Personality Traits, Technology Affinity and User Experience (UX) of identical tasks when using an assistance system on a tablet for a manufacturing process. The results do not show an influence of the test environment (VR/real world) on UX or Presence. However, trends suggest a higher UX in VR and indicate that Technology Affinity is a possible predictor of UX in VR. The significant correlation in VR between the UX factor Attractiveness and the Presence factor Engagement emphasizes the importance of users being involved in VR. There is a trend towards a correlation between Presence and the NEO-FFI Personality Trait factor Openness. In this respect, the present study can be viewed as a pilot study, which enables targeted subsequent studies with larger numbers of participants.

Virtual reality training simulations to acquire surgical skills are important for increasing patient safety and save valuable resources, e.g., cadavers, supervision and operating room time. However, as surgery is a craft, simulators must not only provide a high degree of visual realism, but especially a realistic haptic behavior. While such simulators exist for surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy, other surgical fields, especially where large forces need to be exerted, like total hip arthroplasty (THA; implantation of a hip joint protheses), lack realistic VR training simulations. In this paper we present for the first time a novel VR training simulation for the five steps of THA (from femur head resection to stem implantation) with realis-tic haptic feedback. To achieve this, a novel haptic hammering device, an upgraded version of the Virtuose 6D haptic device from Haption, novel algorithms for collision detection, haptic rendering, and material removal are introduced. In a study with 17 surgeons of diverse experience levels, we confirmed the realism, usefulness and usability of our novel methods.

Performing user experience (UX) and usability studies in VR to assess early product prototypes is common in the automotive and other sectors but has not yet been applied for the development of surgical instruments. For the development of an aspiration/irrigation instrument using a shape memory alloy (SMA) tube, we wanted to get an early user feedback of our prototype from medical staff. We conducted a study with 22 participants with a medical background and considered a potential presence bias of the UX and usability ratings. The results confirm the novelty and usefulness of a SMA tube and gave us valuable feedback for optimizing the shapeshifting mechanism.

We present a study investigating the question whether and how people's intention to change their environmental behavior depends on the degrees of immersion and freedom of navigation when they experience a virtual coral reef. The most striking result is, perhaps, that the highest level of immersion combined with the highest level of navigation did not lead to the highest intentions to change behavior.

We present a novel haptic rendering approach to simulate material removal in medical simulations at haptic rates. The core of our method is a new massively-parallel continuous collision detection algorithm in combination with a stable and flexible 6-DOF collision response scheme that combines penalty-based and constraint-based force computation.

Surgical VR-simulators including haptic and tactile feedback can severely improve the training of surgeons. However, so far only minimally invasive surgery benefited from the capabilities of VR. For non-minimally invasive surgery, only one prototype to simulate the reaming of the acetabula during hip joint replacement surgery exists, which is unable to simulate the vibrations of the surgical reamer. By integrating electronic components, a tactile reamer, able to simulate the vibrations, could be developed. A qualitative assessment with orthopedic surgeons revealed that the simulated sound of the vibrations is realistic but the intensity of the vibrations needs to be improved.

We present the first VR training simulator for hip replacement surgeries. We solved the main challenges of this task - high and stable forces during the milling process while simultaneously a very sensitive feedback is required - by using an industrial robot for the force output and the development of a novel massively parallel haptic rendering algorithm with support for material removal.

We present the first VR training simulator for hip replacement surgeries. We solved the main challenges of this task - high and stable forces during the milling process while simultaneously a very sensitive feedback is required - by using an industrial robot for the force output and the development of a novel massively parallel haptic rendering algorithm with support for material removal.

Many VR-training application require the integration of haptics, i.e. for surgical training. However, surgical VR-training is still limited to minimal invasive surgeries. For surgeries where high forces occur, like hip replacement, no VR-training applications have been developed. One cause for this is the lack of appropriate haptic devices which can deliver high forces. Novel industrial collaborative robots can provide high forces. Although, they lack control interfaces allowing to use them as haptic devices. We present 4 approaches for using these robots as general, multipurpose haptic input and output devices. The implemented approach was integrated into a VR hip replacement training application. An initial assessment demonstrates the general feasibility of our solution.

For various VR/MR/AR applications, such as virtual usability studies, it is very important that the participants have the feeling that they are really in the environment. This feeling of “being” in a mediated environment is described as presence. Two important factors that influence presence are the level of immersion and the navigation method. We developed two navigation methods to simulate natural walking using a Wii Balance Board and a Kinect Sensor. In this preliminary study we examined the effects of these navigation methods and the level of immersion on the participants' perceived presence in a 2×2 factorial between-subjects study with 32 participants in two different VEs (Powerwall and Mixed-Reality-See-Through-Glasses). The results indicate that reported presence is higher for the Kinect navigation and Powerwall for some facets of presence.