Human-Machine Interaction and Virtual Reality

Permanents – 2,75 ETPR : Dominique Bechmann, Antonio Capobianco, Jérôme Grosjean, Arash Habibi, Flavien Lecuyer Engineers : Thierry Blandet, Thomas Duhamel (GAIA platform) PhD students : Benjamin Freeling (2022-2025), Kevin Béranger (2022-2025), Martin Heitz (2022-2025), Thomas Lehoux (2021-2024)

Objectives. For the next years, one of the objectives in IGG team for the HMI-VR theme is to reinforce existing collaborations to keep studying the perceptual aspects linked to HMI and VR. During the last few years, our team launched some projects more oriented on the users' perception of HMI and VR applications. Those projects are a good opportunity for the team to link the previously existing research works done locally and separately on both HMI and VR themes. They also allowed for diverse partnerships, with works done in collaboration with the Laboratoire de Psychologie des Cognitions (LPC) in Strasbourg, the Centre d’Animation Sociale et Familiale (CASF) in Bischwiller, and the Institute of Psychology de la Universität Mainz.

Those partnerships are linked to several ongoing projects:

- The PiCOC project, on the use of virtual reality to induce a sense of craving, for a therapy-oriented application. This is a joint work with Luisa Weiner from LPC.

- The USUEL project, on the study of what causes the social fracture linked to computer usage, is done with the CASF in Bischwiller.

- Research on room perception based on sound, performed within the Chaire Gutenberg lead by Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel of the Institute of Psychology (Universität Mainz)

Furthermore, our team has a research focus on the human aspect of VR for collaborative applications, notably through the EquipEx+ CONTINUUM. In this regard, we launched some works linked to the feeling in VR generated by the avatar. Some ongoing works are:

- Martin Heitz's CIFRE thesis, on avatar animation – more precisely,, for lower body animation – for collaborative virtual reality, in a partnership with the company INETUM,

- Benjamin Freeling's thesis on the link between the avatar representation and the emotions felt in virtual reality

With those works, the team develops a research effort on the question of the avatar in VR, which we want to reinforce in the next years.