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Palash Vijay – Dual Degree CSE

Palash Vijay  received his MS  Dual Degree in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). His research work was supervised by Dr. Priyanka Srivastava. Here’s a summary of Palash Vijay’s Abiotic Determinants To Spatial Learning During Navigation In VR Systems:

Use of Immersive Virtual Reality(VR) stack is expanding, as the organizations explore alternative methods to reduce the cost of training. The effectiveness of VR simulators has demonstrated significant gains in the transfer of training for domains such as surgical training, flight training, military reconnaissance, search and rescue operations, etc. However, despite significant advancements, there exists a substantial gap to study human cognition and behavior and to also train them for demanding tasks like military combat and reconnaissance. Many of the military systems in use today are robotic with a limited degree of decision-making ability and interaction with the environment where making mistakes isn’t an option and therefore requires human intervention to operate and command remotely. Thus, teleoperators need to be instructed and trained prior to perform such operations efficiently and effectively. For a better understanding, and increasing VR’s usability, we aim to identify the relevant constituent components of immersive technologies, and differentiate their roles. In this thesis, we aim to determine the role of two determinants (goal-specific instructions and display fidelity) of spatial knowledge that one acquires during spatial navigation in VR. We conducted two experiments to disentangle the contribution of the two factors individually. Literature has demonstrated the relative importance of instructions on task performance and having goals can help in focusing attention on relevant information in the environment. However, it is also dependent on the nature of goal or activity that one is asked to accomplish. From a navigation perspective, the simplest of the goal is to return to the starting point to end the activity. In the first study, we included this goal in the instructions for one group while the other group were only instructed to explore the virtual environment and build understanding. Acquired topological spatial knowledge was assessed from the drawn sketch-maps. Our results showed that participants with goal-specific instructions found it difficult to recall one out of three spatial relationships (Object Positioning). These results indicate that the presence of additional goals in the instruction can impact the spatial memory of the operators and can be detrimental to task performance. HMD VR compared to DT, provides a 3-D experience during the virtual exploration, it offers a sense of complete immersion in the virtual world but literature has shown mixed findings depending on the applications. To study the role of the second factor, we conducted a pilot study followed by a full-scale study to examine how two common VR display modes, head-mounted display (HMD) and desktop (DT), would affect spatial learning when we restrict ambulatory locomotion in HMD. The findings and shortcomings of the pilot study helped in the refinement of experimental design, protocols, and methodology. The two display modes were compared on spatial learning, time taken to complete the virtual exploration, motion sickness, workload, sense of presence, and spatial orientation ability. Our results highlight the differential effect of DT vs. HMD VR depends on the nature of cognitive and functional behavior that the user employs. We explain these results in terms of deficient idiothetic information in non-ambulatory HMD and lesser sensory conflicts in desktop mode. This thesis sets up the foundation stones and provides future research directions that could be used in developing more robust VR experiments and applications. It is intended to be useful for VR experimenters as well as end-users. These results are relevant for developing customized and sustainable virtual reality-based human-computer interactions.