Metrics for 3D Object Pointing and Manipulation in Virtual Reality: The Introduction and Validation of a Novel Approach in Measuring Human Performance

Assessing the performance of human movements during teleoperation and virtual reality (VR) is a challenging problem, particularly in 3D space, due to complex settings. Despite the presence of a multitude of measurements, a compelling standardized 3D metric is yet missing, aggravating interstudy comparability. Hence, evaluating human performance in virtual environments (VEs) is a long-standing research goal, and a performance metric that combines two or more measurements under one formulation remains largely unexplored, particularly in higher dimensions. The absence of such a metric is primarily attributed to the discrepancies between pointing and manipulation, the complex spatial variables in 3D, and the combination of translational and rotational movements.