Effects of Speed of a Collocated Virtual Walker and Proximity Toward a Static Virtual Character on Avoidance Movement Behavior

We explored the avoidance movement behaviors of study participants immersed in a virtual reality environment. We placed a static virtual character at the midpoint between the start and target spot for the avoidance task, and a virtual walker character in front of the starting spot and scripted it to reach the target spot. Participants were placed behind the virtual walker in order to measure its influence on participants' behavior. We developed nine experimental conditions assigned to the virtual walker character by following a 3 (speed: slow vs. normal vs. fast walking speed) x 3 (proximity: close vs. middle vs. far proximity to the static virtual character) study design. For this within-group study, we collected data from 22 study participants to explore how speed and proximity walking patterns assigned to a virtual walker character could impact participants' avoidance movement behaviors and decisions. Our data revealed that 1) the speed factor impacted the participants' avoidance movement behavior; 2) the proximity factor did not significantly impact the participants' avoidance movement behavior; 3) the virtual walker character did not significantly impact participants' avoidance decisions regarding the static virtual character; 4) in all examined conditions, the side-by-side distances between the participants and the static virtual character were inside the social space according to the proxemics model; and 5) in conditions in which a slow virtual walker character was present or in the condition of normal speed and far proximity, we observed an increased number of participants pass the virtual walker character.