Virtual reality is a powerful tool to run experiments. It gives you perfect control over the environment that subjects perceive. Thank to this control, many aspects of the experimental setting are eased up:
- Creation of precise situations
- Variation of selected factors between trials
- Reproduction of the same stimuli for each participants
- etc.
We are using it in three projects: OPMOS, CROWDBOT and Present. On one end, it gives us the opportunity to try robot navigation algorithm in a crowd with no danger to participants, on the other, it makes it possible to study people behavior in a crowd without having to manage a big number of confederate. For our experiments, we have the chance of having access to several equipment:
- Several HMD (Fove, Vive, Pimax)
- Two CAVE (Immersia and Immermove)
- A motion capture gymnasium (part of Immermove), which uses a Qualisys setup.
CrowdMP
For our many experiments with crowd, we have develop a platform using Unity, called CrowdMP, that allows us to immerse one user in a virtual crowd using any of our virtual platform. This platform is in constant evolution, first to keep up with the evolution of VR (New HMD, Trackers, etc.), secondly to provide solutions to various experimental needs (eye tracking, stress measuring, haptic feedback, etc.). See link below for more information on the platform:
