Robust Redirected Walking in the Wild

Locomotion is a fundamental component of experiences in virtual reality (VR). However, locomotion in VR is often difficult because the layouts of the physical and virtual environments are often different, which may cause unobstructed paths in the virtual world to correspond to obstructed paths in the physical world. Thus, in order to deliver a comfortable and immersive virtual experience to users, it is important that the user can explore the virtual world using techniques that help them avoid collisions with unseen physical objects. Redirected walking (RDW) is one such technique that enables collision-free locomotion in VR using real walking. Although RDW shows promise as an effective locomotion interface, it has seen relatively little adoption in the consumer market due to the difficulty in deploying effective RDW algorithms that are robust to different environment layouts and different users’ perceptual thresholds. For my thesis, I am focused on developing RDW methods that are capable of enabling collision-free locomotion in arbitrary physical and virtual environments for a wide range of users.