| Summary: | Immersive virtual environment (IVE) systems have applications in many areas, such as training, physical therapy, and entertainment. This thesis examines a fundamental function in IVEs: navigation. We built and optimized a locomotion system that allows free exploration in large IVEs within a limited physically tracked space while maintaining users spatial orientation. We additionally examined bipedal locomotion systems versus non-locomotive interfaces as means of moving and navigating in an IVE to determine the costs and benefits of both.
This thesis then focused on an application: human-robot teaming scenarios involving locomotion and navigation. In particular, we examined how a human supervisor, in a search task, attends to robot teams, potentially large and/or geographically distributed. We examined how the presence of moving robots and an individual difference of navigation strategy affected peoples navigation ability when they were embedded with a large robot team. Our results advance cognitive findings in spatial attention division and spatial navigation of demanding scenarios. Our research may also provide important implications for the design of human-robot teams, and the command and control strategy of such teams.
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