Virtual Reality Without Vision: A Haptic and Auditory White Cane to Navigate Complex Virtual Worlds

Abstract: Current Virtual Reality (VR) technologies focus on rendering visuospatial effects, and thus are inaccessible for blind or low vision users. We examine the use of a novel white cane controller that enables navigation without vision of large virtual environments with complex architecture, such as winding paths and occluding walls and doors. The cane controller employs a lightweight three-axis brake mechanism to provide large-scale shape of virtual objects. The multiple degrees-of-freedom enables users to adapt the controller to their preferred techniques and grip. In addition, surface textures are rendered with a voice coil actuator based on contact vibrations; and spatialized audio is determined based on the progression of sound through the geometry around the user. We design a scavenger hunt game that demonstrates how our device enables blind users to navigate a complex virtual environment. Seven out of eight users were able to successfully navigate the virtual room (6x6m) to locate targets while avoiding collisions. We conclude with design consideration on creating immersive non-visual VR experiences based on user preferences for cane techniques, and cane material properties.

25/04/2020

WalkingVibe: Reducing Virtual Reality Sickness and Improving Realism while Walking in VR using Unobtrusive Head-mounted Vibrotactile Feedback

adversarial, self-driving, detection, lidar, 3d, mesh, perception, geometric deep learning

1:00

19/08/2021

Michael Nebeling, Maximilian Speicher, Xizi Wang and
Shwetha Rajaram, Brian Hall, Zijian Xie, Alexander Raistrick, Michelle Aebersold, Edward Happ, Jiayin Wang, Yanan Sun, Lotus Zhang, Leah Ramsier, Rhea Kulkarni

instance completion, shape completion, instance segmentation, 3d scene understanding, rgb-d, multi-view geometry, segmentation

1:01

06/12/2020

Mahyar Najibi, Guangda Lai, Abhijit Kundu and
Zhichao Lu, Vivek Rathod, Thomas Funkhouser, Caroline Pantofaru, David Ross, Larry S. Davis, Alireza Fathi

zero-shot detection, zero shot learning, generative model, conditional variational autoencoder, feature synthesis, data augmentation, object detection, deep learning

1:00

14/06/2020

Learning to Measure the Static Friction Coefficient in Cloth Contact

Abdullah Haroon Rasheed, Victor Romero, Florence Bertails-Descoubes and
Stefanie Wuhrer, Jean-Sebastien Franco, Arnaud Lazarus

Samyak Datta, Oleksandr Maksymets, Judy Hoffman and
Stefan Lee, Dhruv Batra Georgia Tech &, Facebook AI Research, Devi Parikh Georgia Tech &, Facebook AI Research

monocular depth estimation self-supervised learning structure-from-motion learning from videos 3d convolutions autonomous driving deep learning

4:58

14/06/2020

state representation learning, graph neural networks, model-based reinforcement learning, relational learning, object discovery

14:51

02/02/2021