This paper examines how people jointly coordinate their decisions and actions with risky vs. safe human and agent road-crossing partners (Fig. 1 ). The task for participants was to physically cross a steady stream of traffic in a large-screen virtual environment without getting hit by a car. The computer-generated (CG) agent was programmed to be either safe (taking only large gaps) or risky (also taking small gaps). The human partners were classified as safe (taking more large gaps) or risky (also taking some small gaps) based on their average gap size selection. We found that participants in all four conditions preferred to cross with their partner. As a consequence, the riskiness of the partner (both human and agent) influenced the riskiness of participants' gap choices. We also found that participants tightly synchronized their movement with both human and agent partners. The largest differences in performance between those paired with agent vs. human partners occurred on trials when participants crossed different gaps than their partners. This study demonstrates the potential for studying how people interact with CG agents when performing whole-body joint actions using large-screen immersive virtual environments.

We investigated how two people jointly coordinate their decisions and actions in a co-occupied, large-screen virtual environment. The task for participants was to physically cross a virtual road with continuous traffic without getting hit by a car. Participants performed this task either alone or with another person (see Figure 1). Two separate streams of non-stereo images were generated based on the dynamic locations of the two viewers’ eye-points. Stereo shutter glasses were programmed to display a single image stream to each viewer so that they saw perspectively correct non-stereo images for their eyepoint. We found that participant pairs often crossed the same gap together and closely synchronized their movements when crossing. Pairs also chose larger gaps than individuals, presumably to accommodate the extra time needed to cross through gaps together. These results demonstrate how two people interact and coordinate their behaviors in performing whole-body, joint motions in a co-occupied virtual environment. This study also provides a foundation for future studies examining joint actions in shared VEs where participants are represented by graphic avatars.

This paper investigates the influence of stereoscopic vs. non-stereoscopic display in large-screen virtual environments on an everyday perception-action task - crossing traffic-filled roadways as a pedestrian. The task for participants was to physically cross a virtual road with continuous traffic without getting hit by a car in a CAVE-like virtual environment. Half of the participants performed the task with stereoscopic display and half performed the task with non-stereoscopic display. We found that stereoscopic display had little impact on the size of the gaps participants crossed or the timing of their crossing motion relative to the gap with the exception of a small difference in crossing speed. The results are important for validating the use of non-stereoscopic image displays in ground vehicle simulation and supporting the use of non-stereoscopic displays for multi-viewpoint rendering in co-occupied virtual environments.

We investigated how people jointly coordinate their decisions and actions with a computer-generated character (agent) in a large-screen virtual environment. The task for participants was to physically cross a steady stream of traffic on a virtual road without getting hit by a car. Participants performed this task with another person or with a computer-generated character (Fig. 1). The character was programmed to be either safe (taking only large gaps) or risky (also taking relatively small gaps). We found that participants behaved in many respects similarly with real and virtual partners. They maintained similar distances between themselves and their partner, they often crossed the same gap with their partner, and they synchronized their crossing with their partner. We also found that the riskiness of the character influenced the gap choices of participants. This study demonstrates the potential for using large-screen virtual environments to study how people interact with CG characters when performing whole-body joint actions.

We investigated how two people jointly coordinate their decisions and actions in a co-occupied, large-screen virtual environment. The task for participants was to physically cross a virtual road with continuous traffic without getting hit by a car. Participants performed this task either alone or with another person (see Fig.1). We found that pairs often crossed the same gap together and closely synchronized their movements when crossing. Pairs also chose larger gaps than individuals to accommodate the extra time needed to cross through gaps together. These results reveal how two people interact and coordinate their behaviors in performing whole-body, joint motions. This study also provides a foundation for future studies examining joint actions in shared VEs where participants are represented by graphic avatars.

This paper presents an experiment conducted in a large-screen immersive virtual environment to evaluate how texting pedestrians respond to permissive traffic alerts delivered via their cell phone. We developed a cell phone app that delivered information to texting pedestrians about when traffic conditions permit safe crossing. We compared gap selection and movement timing in three groups of pedestrians: texting, texting with alerts, and no texting (control). Participants in the control and alert groups chose larger gaps and were more discriminating in their gap choices than participants in the texting group. Both the control and alert groups had more time to spare than the texting group when they exited the roadway even though the alert group timed their entry relative to the lead car less tightly than the control and texting groups. By choosing larger gaps, participants in the alert group were able to compensate for their poorer timing of entry, resulting in a margin of safety that did not differ from those who were not texting. However, they also relied heavily on the alert system and paid less attention to the roadway. The discussion focuses on the potential of assistive technologies based on Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) communications technology for mitigating pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes.