Moving Cows in Space: Exploiting Proprioception as a Framework for Virtual Environment Interaction

Manipulation in immersive virtual environments is difficult partly because we humans must do without the haptic contact with real objects we rely on in the real world to orient ourselves and our manipulanda. To compensate for this lack, we propose exploiting the real objects one does have in a virtual environment, one's own body parts. We present a unified framework for virtual-environment interaction based on proprioception, a person's sense of the position and orientation of his body and limbs. We describe a taxonomy of three forms of body-relative interaction: • Direct manipulation ways to use body sense to help control manipulation • Physical mnemonics ways to store/recall information relative to the body • Gestural actions ways to use body-relative actions to issue commands and recall abstractions Automatic scaling is a way to instantly bring objects within reach so that users can manipulate them using proprioceptive cues. Several novel virtual interaction techniques based upon automatic scaling and our proposed framework of proprioception allow a user to intuitively, efficiently, precisely, and lazily interact with a virtual world. Finally we describe the integration of these techniques into a real-world system: the Chapel Hill Immersive Modeling Program . CR