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Dissertation Information for Eric Burns

NAME:
- Eric Burns

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Computer Science

SCHOOL:
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Leonard McMillan
- Mary C. Whitton
- Abigail T. Panter
- Bernard D. Adelstein
- Dennis R. Proffitt

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: MACBETH: Management of avatar conflict by employment of a technique hybrid

Abstract: Since virtual objects do not prevent users from penetrating them, a virtual environment user may place his real hand inside a virtual object. If the virtual environment system prevents the user's hand avatar from penetrating the object, the hand avatar must be placed somewhere other than the user's real hand position. I propose a technique, named MACBETH (Management of Avatar Conflict By Employment of a Technique Hybrid) for managing the position of a user's hand avatar in a natural manner after it has been separated from the user's real hand due to collision with a virtual object. This technique balances visual/proprioceptive discrepancy in position and velocity by choosing each so that they are equally detectable.

To gather the necessary information to implement MACBETH, I performed user studies to determine users' detection thresholds for visual/proprioceptive discrepancy in hand position and velocity. I then ran a user study to evaluate MACBETH against two other techniques for managing the hand avatar position: the rubber-band and incremental-motion techniques. Users rated MACBETH as more natural than the other techniques and preferred MACBETH over both. Users performed better on a hand navigation task with MACBETH than with the incremental-motion technique and performed equally well as with the rubber-band technique.

MPACT Scores for Eric Burns

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:33:58

Advisors and Advisees Graph