L’industrie fait de plus en plus appel aux technologies de la realite virtuelle dans ses activites de conception, mais aussi dans celles du developpement des produits et de la mise en place des processus industriels de fabrication. Cet article presente l’utilisation des differents outils de la realite virtuelle, sur la base de multiples exemples. Une methodologie 3I 2 sera exposee, permettant de bien concevoir l’application de realite virtuelle correspondant aux vrais besoins industriels. Un focus sera fait sur l’usage des techniques de realite augmentee pour l’aide a l’assemblage et a la maintenance industrielle, ainsi que la formation en environnement virtuel en direction du personnel. Une analyse des potentialites et des limites de la realite virtuelle cloture cet article.

Une fois immerge dans un espace virtuel, l’etre humain voit ses comportements se modifier. Les adaptations sensorimotrices et cognitives necessaires pour faire face au nouvel environnement virtuel peuvent affecter les composantes physiologiques, cognitives et sociales de l’utilisateur. L’objectif de cet article est, via une definition des concepts d’immersion, interaction, presence et une presentation des fondamentaux des sens humains, d’evoquer les effets potentiels de la realite virtuelle sur ces differentes composantes. Des methodes experimentales destinees a realiser des mesures objectives et subjectives de ces effets sont egalement exposees.

This paper presents an ongoing work aimed at evaluating Extended Reality training for the interaction of general public with mobile robots, with a particular focus on semi-autonomous cars.

In conditionally automated vehicles, drivers can engage in secondary activities while traveling to their destination. However, drivers are required to appropriately respond, in a limited amount of time, to a take-over request when the system reaches its functional boundaries. In this context, Virtual Reality systems represent a promising training and learning tool to properly familiarize drivers with the automated vehicle and allow them to interact with the novel equipment involved. In this study, the effectiveness of an Head-Mounted display (HMD)-based training program for acquiring interaction skills in automated cars was compared to a user manual and a fixed-base simulator. Results show that the training system affects the take-over performances evaluated in a test drive in a high-end driving simulator. Moreover, self-reported measures indicate that the HMD-based training is preferred with respect to the other systems.

This paper presents a preliminary study of the use of Virtual Reality for the simulation of a particular driving task: the control recovery of a semi-autonomous vehicle by a driver engaged in an attention-demanding secondary activity. In this paper the authors describe a fully immersive simulator for semi-autonomous vehicles and present the pilot study that has been conducted for determining the most appropriate interface to interact with the simulator. The interaction with the simulator is not only limited to the actual car control; it also concerns the execution of a secondary activity which aims to put the driver out of the loop by distracting him/her from the main driving task. This study evaluates the role of a realistic interface and a 6-DoF controller-based interaction on objective and subjective measures. Preliminary results suggest that subjective indicators related to comfort, ease of use and adaptation show a significant difference in favor of realistic interfaces. However, task achievement performances do not provide decisive parameters for determining the most adequate interaction modality.

Nowadays, actual stereoscopic 3D renderers use two cameras to render images to the screen. These two cameras have parallel optical axis. It is well know that if cameras converge, then it produces distortions called vertical parallaxes. These distortions are supposed to stress visual system, but we do not know the effect on perception. In this article, we will test if these vertical parallaxes can improve shape perception. We found out that vertical parallaxes does improve shape perception, but the effect is decreased when the object is far from the user because when the cameras converge far away it get closer to a parallel configuration.

In this paper, we focus on two challenges to enable human-robot collaboration in factories. The first challenge is to evaluate the acceptability of an operator to work with a robot on a new collaborative task. Comparing physical and virtual situation, we highlight notions related to acceptability which can be evaluated using virtual reality. This will able us to evaluate future collaborative scenarios before their setting-up on supply chains. The second challenge is to provide a natural collaboration between the robot and the operator. We chose to study gesture recognition to enable a smooth collaboration. With this method, the robot should be able to understand its environment, adapt its speed and be synchronized with the operator. We used two use cases to test our frameworks, to evaluate them and to highlight possible improvements.

PURPOSE:Stereoscopic displays challenge the neural cross-coupling between accommodation and vergence by inducing a constant accommodative demand and a varying vergence demand. Stereoscopic viewing calls for a decrease in the gain of vergence accommodation, which is the accommodation caused by vergence, quantified by using the convergence-accommodation to convergence (CA/C) ratio. However, its adaptability is still a subject of debate.METHODS:Cross-coupling (CA/C and AC/A ratios) and tonic components of vergence and accommodation were assessed in 12 participants (27.5 ± 5 years, stereoacuity better than 60 arc seconds, 6/6 acuity with corrected refractive error) before and after a 20-minute exposure to stereoscopic viewing. During stimulation, vergence demand oscillated from 1 to 3 meter angles along a virtual sagittal line in sinusoidal movements, while accommodative demand was fixed at 1.5 diopters.RESULTS:Results showed a decreased CA/C ratio (-10.36%, df = 10, t = 2.835, P = 0.018), with no change in the AC/A ratio (P = 0.090), tonic vergence (P = 0.708), and tonic accommodation (P = 0.493).CONCLUSIONS:These findings demonstrated that the CA/C ratio can exhibit adaptive adjustments. The observed nature and amount of the oculomotor modification failed to compensate for the stereoscopic constraint.

For some years, a lot of Stereoscopic 3D contents have been released. Even if the depth sensation is realistic, it is still not perfect and uncomfortable. The objective of our work is to use the gaze of the user to bring closer artificial vision and natural vision to increase the precision of the perception and decrease visual fatigue. For example, a difference in artificial vision is the accommodation point and the convergence point of the eye. In natural vision, these points are the same whereas in artificial vision event if the convergence point is on the looked object, the accommodation point remains on the screen. This difference bring visual fatigue. In this article, we propose and evaluate the effect of an artificial blur in peripheral vision in order to reduce the accommodation vergence conflict and so the strain. We found that adding a blur in peripheral vision decreases the visual fatigue but this blur can’t be used actually due to eye-tracker latency.

In the field of image synthesis, the simulation of material's appearance requires a rigorous resolution of the light transport equation. This implies taking into account all the elements that may have an influence on the spectral radiance, and that are perceived by the human eye. Obviously, the reflectance properties of the materials have a major impact in the calculations, but other significant properties of light such as spectral distribution and polarization must also be taken into account, in order to expect correct results. Unfortunately real maps of the polarized or spectral environment corresponding to a real sky do not exist.Therefore, it seemed necessary to focus our work on capturing such data, in order to have a system that qualifies all the properties of light and capable of powering simulations in a renderer software. As a consequence, in this work, we develop and characterize a device designed to capture the entire light environment, by taking into account both the dynamic range of the spectral distribution and the polarization states, in a measurement time of less than two minutes. We propose a data format inspired by polarimetric imaging and fitted for a spectral rendering engine, which exploits the "Stokes-Mueller formalism."