RedirectedDoors+: Door-Opening Redirection with Dynamic Haptics in Room-Scale VR

RedirectedDoors is a visuo-haptic door-opening redirection technique in VR, and it has shown promise in its ability to efficiently compress the physical space required for a room-scale VR experience. However, its previous implementation has only supported laboratory experiments with a single door opening at a fixed location. To significantly expand this technique for room-scale VR, we have developed RedirectedDoors+, a robot-based system that permits consecutive door-opening redirection with haptics. Specifically, our system is mainly achieved with the use of three components: (1) door robots, a small number of wheeled robots equipped with a doorknob-like prop, (2) a robot-positioning algorithm that arbitrarily positions the door robots to provide the user with just-in-time haptic feedback during door opening, and (3) a user-steering algorithm that determines the redirection gain for every instance of door opening to keep the user away from the boundary of the play area. Results of simulated VR exploration in six virtual environments reveal our system's performance relative to user walking speed, paths, and number of door robots, from which we derive its usage guidelines. We then conduct a user study (N = 12) in which participants experience a walkthrough application using the actual system. The results demonstrate that the system is able to provide haptic feedback while redirecting the user within a limited play area.