Project Number

320

Title

Physiological Reaction and Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments

Description

Research demonstration on gauging virtual environment effectiveness through physiological metrics.

Contact

Michael Meehan, Mary Whitton, et al

Affiliation

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Address

Department of Computer Science 
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3175

E-mail

meehan@cs.unc.edu, whitton@cs.unc.edu

WWW

Year

2002

Reference

SIGGRAPH 2002 Conference Abstracts and Applications

Project Details

"A common measure of the quality or effectiveness of a virtual environment (VE) is the amount of 'presence' (the sense of 'being there') it evokes in users. For any VE that elicits a physiological reaction - stressful, relaxing or otherwise - it is possible to construct a physiological measure of presence. These physiological measures of presence can be used to understand which aspects of the VE are important for improving presence." 
 
In the 2002 Emerging Technologies demonstration, visitors can experience the dramatic VE constructed for this research that demonstrates that heart hate is a reliable, valid, sensitive, and objective measure of presence in stressful virtual environments. 
 
The exhibit measures heart rate, skin conductance, and skin temperature while an attendee is subjected to a virtual task in a one-to-one scale environment with an unguarded hole above a 20ft deep room.

Sight

graphics workstation, head-mounted display

Sound

embedded audio

Touch

tracking manipulator, sensor gear, head-mounted display

Smell

Taste

Other

Emergence

1 - Innovation, Custom, Research

Intent

3 - Application (expression, enabler)

Primary

312 - health / medicine

Secondary

201 - virtual environment

Remarks

Implementation details undocumented. 
 
Reported in Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2002, "Physiological Measures of Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments," M Meehan, B, Insko, M. Whitton, F. Brooks, et al.

 


Last updated: 5 Jul 2002
Sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH, Copyright © 2002 Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM)
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