Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A framework to design 3D interaction assistance in constraints-based virtual environments

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Virtual Reality Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The equilibrium of complex systems often depends on a set of constraints. Thus, credible virtual reality modeling of these systems must respect these constraints, in particular for 3D interactions. In this paper, we propose a generic framework for designing assistance to 3D user interaction in constraints-based virtual environment that associates constraints, interaction tasks and assistance tools, such as virtual fixtures (VFs). This framework is applied to design assistance tools for molecular biology analysis. Evaluation shows that VF designed using our framework improve effectiveness of the manipulation task.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. From the verb “to afford”: the ability of an object to suggest his own use (Gibson 1977).

  2. Visual immersion can be defined as the objective level of fidelity provided by the system (Bowman and McMahan 2007). It depends on several factors: field of view (FOV), field of regard (FOR), display size, display resolution, stereoscopy, head-tracking, etc. Kalawsky have also adopted a techno-centered classification of immersion depending on the type of visual display and FOV: non-immersive, semi-immersive or fully-immersive VEs (Kalawsky 1996).

  3. http://eric.univ-lyon2.fr/~ricco/tanagra/fr/tanagra.html.

References

  • Abbott JJ, Marayong P, Okamura MA (2007) Haptic virtual fixtures for robot-assisted manipulation. Springer tracts in robotics research, vol 28, pp 49–64

  • Bowman D (1999) Interaction techniques for common tasks in immersive virtual environments: design, evaluation, and application. PhD thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology

  • Bowman D, Hodges L (1995) User interface constraints for immersive virtual environment applications. Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center technical report GIT-GVU-95-26

  • Bowman D, Hodges L (1997) An evaluation of techniques for grabbing and manipulating remote objects in immersive virtual environments. In: Proceedings of the 1997 symposium on interactive 3D graphics, pp 35–ff

  • Bowman D, Koller D, Hodges L (1998) A methodology for the evaluation of travel techniques for immersive virtual environments. In: Virtual reality, vol 3, pp 120–131

  • Bowman DA, McMahan RP (2007) Virtual reality: how much immersion is enough? Computer 40(7):36–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks T, Ince I, Robotics H (1992) Operator vision aids for telerobotic assembly and servicing inspace. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, proceedings, vol 1, pp 886–891

  • Calderon C, Cavazza M, Diaz D (2003) A new approach to the interactive resolution of configuration problems in virtual environments. In: Smart graphics, Third international symposium. Springer, Berlin, pp 112–122

  • Castet J, Florens J (2008) A virtual reality simulator based on haptic hard constraints. In: Haptics: perception, devices and scenarios. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 5024, pp 918–923

  • Cooper S, Khatib F, Treuille A, Barbero J, Lee J, Beenen M, Leaver-Fay A, Baker D, Popovic Z, Players F (2010) Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game. Nature 466(7307):756–760

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Essabbah M, Otmane S, Hérisson J, Mallem M (2009a) A new approach to design an interactive system for molecular analysis. In: Human-computer interaction. Interacting in various application domains, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 5613, pp 713–722

  • Essabbah M, Otmane S, Mallem M, Herisson J (2009b) Spatial organization of DNA: from the physical data to the 3D model. In: IEEE/ACS international conference on computer systems and applications, pp 880–883

  • Férey N, Delalande O, Grasseau G, Baaden M (2008) A VR framework for interacting with molecular simulations. In: ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology, pp 91–94

  • Férey N, Nelson J, Martin C, Picinali L, Bouyer G, Tek A, Bourdot P, Burkhardt J, Katz B, Ammi M, Etchebest C, Autin L (2009) Multisensory VR interaction for protein-docking in the CoRSAIRe project. Virtual Real 13(4):257–271

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernando T, Murray N, Tan K, Wimalaratne P (1999) Software architecture for a constraint-based virtual environment. In: Proceedings of the ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology, VRST ’99. ACM, New York, pp 147–154

  • Gibson JJ (1977) The Theory of affordances. In: Shaw R, Bransford J (eds) Perceiving, acting, and knowing

  • Gillet A, Sanner M, Stoffler D, Olson A (2005) Tangible interfaces for structural molecular biology. Structure 13(3):483–491

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guébert C, Duriez C, Grisoni L (2008) Unified processing of constraints for interactive simulation. In: Proceedings of VRIPHYS

  • Heyd J, Birmanns S (2009) Immersive structural biology: a new approach to hybrid modeling of macromolecular assemblies. Virtual Real 13(4):245–255

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby R, Ferneau M, Humphries J (1994) Gestural interaction in a virtual environment. In: Proceedings of SPIE 2177(355)

  • Kalawsky R (1996) Exploiting virtual reality techniques in education and training: technological issues. Technical report. Loughborough University of Technology, Advisory Group on Computer Graphics (AGOCG). http://www.agocg.ac.uk/reports/virtual/vrtech/title.htm

  • Kuang AB, Payandeh S, Zheng B, Henigman F, MacKenzie CL (2004) Assembling virtual fixtures for guidance in training environments. In: International symposium on haptic interfaces for virtual environment and teleoperator systems, pp 367–374

  • Marayong P, Li M, Okamura AM, Hager GD (2003) Spatial motion constraints: theory and demonstrations for robot guidance using virtual fixtures. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, ICRA 2003, 14–19 Sept 2003, Taipei, Taiwan. IEEE, pp 1954–1959

  • Marcelino L, Murray N, Fernando T (2003) A constraint manager to support virtual maintainability. Comput Graph 27(1):19–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mine M (1995) Virtual environment interaction techniques. UNC Chapel Hill Computer Science technical report TR95-018

  • Mine RM, Brooks FP Jr, Sequin CH (1997) Moving objects in space: exploiting proprioception in virtual-environment interaction. In: Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, pp 19–26

  • Oakley I, Adams A, Brewster S, Gray P (2002) Guidelines for the design of haptic widgets. In: Proceedings of British HCI, British Computer Society, pp 195–212

  • Otmane S, Mallem M, Kheddar A, Chavand F (2000) Active virtual guides as an apparatus for augmented reality based telemanipulation system on the internet. In: IEEE annual simulation symposium (ANSS 2000) proceedings, pp 185–191

  • Ouramdane N, Otmane S, Davesne F, Mallem M (2006) Follow-me: a new 3d interaction technique based on virtual guides and granularity of interaction. In: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM international conference on virtual reality continuum and its applications, pp 137–144

  • Picon F, Ammi M, Bourdot P (2008) Haptically-aided extrusion for object edition in CAD. In: Haptics: perception, devices and scenarios, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 5024, pp 736–741

  • Pierce J, Forsberg A, Conway M, Hong S (1997) Image plane interaction techniques in 3d immersive environments. In: Proceedings of the 1997 symposium on interactive 3D graphics, pp 33–ff

  • Poupyrev I, Billinghurst M, Weghorst S (1996) The go-go interaction technique: non-linear mapping for direct manipulation in VR. In: Proceedings of the 9th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, pp 79–80

  • Prada R, Payandeh S (2009) On study of design and implementation of virtual fixtures. Virtual Real 13(2):117–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ren J, Zhang H, Patel R, Peters T (2007) Haptics constrained motion for surgical intervention. In: Studies in health technology and informatics, vol 125, pp 379–384

  • Rosenberg L (1992) The use of virtual fixtures as perceptual overlays to enhance operator performance in remote environments. Technical report, no A054292, USAF Amstrong

  • Simard J, Ammi M (2012) Haptic interpersonal communication: improvement of actions coordination in collaborative virtual environments. In: Virtual reality, vol 16, pp 173–186

  • Smelik R, Galka K, De Kraker KJ, Kuijper F, Bidarra R (2011) Semantic constraints for procedural generation of virtual worlds. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on procedural content generation in games, ACM, p 9

  • Smith G, Stuerzlinger W, Salzman T (2001) 3d scene manipulation with 2d devices and constraints. In: Proceedings of graphics interface, pp 135–142

  • Sternberger L, Bechmann D (2005) Deformable ray-casting interaction technique. In: IEEE young virtual reality conference

  • Sweller J, Ayres P, Kalyuga S (2011) Cognitive load theory. Springer, Berlin

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. French National Research Agency, Paris, France

    Mouna Essabbah

  2. IBISC, University of Evry-Val-d’Essonne, Evry Courcouronnes Cedex, France

    Guillaume Bouyer, Samir Otmane & Malik Mallem

Authors
  1. Mouna Essabbah
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Guillaume Bouyer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Samir Otmane
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Malik Mallem
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mouna Essabbah.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Essabbah, M., Bouyer, G., Otmane, S. et al. A framework to design 3D interaction assistance in constraints-based virtual environments. Virtual Reality 18, 219–234 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-014-0247-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-014-0247-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation