Disney Research Pioneers New Frontiers Using Virtual Reality
Disney Research Pioneers New Frontiers Using Virtual Reality
State-of-the-art Disney research fine-tunes catching a ball in virtual reality.
Scientists from Walt Disney Company’s research division are
pioneering innovative ways to optimize hand-eye coordination while using
a virtual reality (VR) interface to catch a real tennis ball. According
to Disney Research,
the dynamic interaction with tangible physical objects in virtual
reality dramatically enhances the VR experience. These findings have
many potential applications for entertainment, gaming, sports training, as well as, the future development of therapeutic interventions and education-based virtual reality learning tools.
The Disney Research team of Günter Niemeyer and Matthew Pan presented their first-of-its-kind research, "Catching a Ball in Virtual Reality," this week at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2017 conference in Los Angeles. In a statement to Disney Research, senior research scientist, Günter Niemeyer, said
:
Niemeyer received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the areas of adaptive robot control and bilateral teleoperation. His research at Disney continues to examine human-robotic interactions and proprioception in virtual reality environments. (The cerebellum plays a central role in coordinating the unconscious aspects of proprioception.)
In their latest experiment using dynamic VR to guide participants to successfully catch a ball, Niemeyer and Matthew Pan, Disney Research lab associate and a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, have shown (for the first time) that the hand-eye coordination required to catch a real ball is possible in virtual reality.
During this experiment, Pan and Niemeyer examined three different VR ball-catching situations. Interestingly, study participants had a 95 percent success rate catching the ball in all three VR circumstances. In fact, the ability of the VR system to predict the flight of a tennis ball and assist the participant in visualizing the ball's trajectory gave the catcher a practicing advantage not available in the real world. In a statement that touches on the brain mechanics involved with catching a ball, Pan explained the high success rate:
Notably, the predictive assistance of VR visualizations enhanced the ball catcher's senses but also helped fine-tune an effective strategy for catching the ball within milliseconds of actually making contact with the target, as you can see in the video from the Disney Research lab below:
The Disney Research team of Günter Niemeyer and Matthew Pan presented their first-of-its-kind research, "Catching a Ball in Virtual Reality," this week at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2017 conference in Los Angeles. In a statement to Disney Research, senior research scientist, Günter Niemeyer, said
:
"Catching and feeling the real ball in your hand makes VR much richer, more believable, more exciting, more interactive, more dynamic, more real. Catching a ball requires many coordinated skills learned from early childhood, including strong hand-eye coordination."
Niemeyer received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the areas of adaptive robot control and bilateral teleoperation. His research at Disney continues to examine human-robotic interactions and proprioception in virtual reality environments. (The cerebellum plays a central role in coordinating the unconscious aspects of proprioception.)
In their latest experiment using dynamic VR to guide participants to successfully catch a ball, Niemeyer and Matthew Pan, Disney Research lab associate and a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, have shown (for the first time) that the hand-eye coordination required to catch a real ball is possible in virtual reality.
During this experiment, Pan and Niemeyer examined three different VR ball-catching situations. Interestingly, study participants had a 95 percent success rate catching the ball in all three VR circumstances. In fact, the ability of the VR system to predict the flight of a tennis ball and assist the participant in visualizing the ball's trajectory gave the catcher a practicing advantage not available in the real world. In a statement that touches on the brain mechanics involved with catching a ball, Pan explained the high success rate:
"The most apparent explanation is that, without information about the ball's location, the catcher must rely on the identified target point, changing the task from one requiring higher brain functions to estimate trajectory to a simpler, visually guided pointing task."
Notably, the predictive assistance of VR visualizations enhanced the ball catcher's senses but also helped fine-tune an effective strategy for catching the ball within milliseconds of actually making contact with the target, as you can see in the video from the Disney Research lab below:
