Redirected Walking in Irregularly Shaped Physical Environments with Dynamic Obstacles

Abstract

Redirected walking (RDW) is a virtual reality (VR) locomotion technique that enables the exploration of a large virtual environment (VE) within a small physical space via real walking. Thus far, the physical environment has generally been assumed to be rectangular, static, and free of obstacles. However, it is unlikely that real-world locations that may be used for VR fulfill these constraints. In addition, accounting for dynamic obstacles such as people helps increase user safety when the view of the physical world is occluded by a head-mounted display. In this work, we present the design and initial implementation of a RDW planning algorithm that can redirect the user in an irregularly shaped physical environment with dynamically moving obstacles. This represents an important step towards the use of RDW in more dynamic, real-world environments.