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Some daily tasks involve grasping multiple objects in one hand and releasing them in a determined order, for example laying out a surgical table or distributing items on shelves. For training these tasks in Virtual Reality (VR), there is no technique for allowing users to grasp multiple objects in one hand in a realistic way, and it is not known if such a technique would benefit user experience. Here, we design a multi-object grasp technique that enables users to grasp multiple objects in one hand and release them in a controlled way. We tested an object placement task under three conditions: real life, VR with single-object grasp and VR with multi-object grasp. Task completion time, distance travelled by the hands and subjective experience were measured in three scenarios: sitting in front of a desktop table, standing up in front of shelves and a room-size scenario where walking was required. Results show that the performance in a real environment is better than in Virtual Reality, both for single-object and multi-object grasping. The single-object technique performs better than the multi-object, except for the room scenario, where multi-object leads to less distance travelled and reported physical demand. For use cases where the distances are small (i.e., desktop scenario), single-object grasp is simpler and easier to understand. For larger scenarios, the multi-object grasp technique represents a good option that can be considered by other application designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some daily tasks involve grasping multiple objects in one hand and releasing them in a determined order, for example laying out a surgical table or distributing items on shelves. For training these tasks in Virtual Reality (VR), there is no technique for allowing users to grasp multiple objects in one hand in a realistic way, and it is not known if such a technique would benefit user experience. Here, we design a multi-object grasp technique that enables users to grasp multiple objects in one hand and release them in a controlled way. We tested an object placement task under three conditions: real life, VR with single-object grasp and VR with multi-object grasp. Task completion time, distance travelled by the hands and subjective experience were measured in three scenarios: sitting in front of a desktop table, standing up in front of shelves and a room-size scenario where walking was required. Results show that the performance in a real environment is better than in Virtual Reality, both for single-object and multi-object grasping. The single-object technique performs better than the multi-object, except for the room scenario, where multi-object leads to less distance travelled and reported physical demand. For use cases where the distances are small (i.e., desktop scenario), single-object grasp is simpler and easier to understand. For larger scenarios, the multi-object grasp technique represents a good option that can be considered by other application designers.

The ISO 9001: 2000 requires the phase of design validation in order to demonstrate that the design output are able to satisfy specified or forecasted user requirements; for this reason, generally, physical prototype are realized in order to evaluate real product performances and their correlation with simulated ones. In this paper, the use of virtual inspection probes to validate playground equipment design is studied, pointing out limits and defining the optimal test strategies. Through the use of Robust Design techniques the authors show that the combined use of real time shadows and positional sound feedback allows to reduce the percentage of wrong inspections in the validation phase of playground equipment design. The authors develop an inspection probe simulation tool in virtual immersive environment. In particular, this tool ensures the collision detection through visual and sound feedback and increases the realism of the immersive environment. Finally, an experimental session, using a physical prototype of playground equipment, is carried out in order to compare these results with the ones coming out from the VR experiments. For a standard entrapment test, the authors assess the dependences of false and missed alarm by the diameter of the openings to evaluate and establish an acceptability threshold for the usability of the virtual probes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]