In a virtual reality (VR) environment, scientists at Disney Research were able to successfully (and reliably) catch a real, physical ball.
“As virtual reality systems become increasingly common, the idea that the user experience can be enriched by enabling dynamic interaction with real objects is gaining interest,” says Vice President for Research at Disney Research Markus Gross. “This early work by our team is tantalizing and suggests that bridging the virtual and real worlds is not only possible, but offers many new opportunities and benefits.”
As we all know, catching a ball in general requires hand-eye coordination and a culmination of additional skills developed during childhood. Senior Research Scientist Günter Niemeyer and Matthew Pan, a Disney Research lab associate and a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, showed how VR systems could guide someone precisely towards a ball’s mid-air position at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2017 conference.
Using an advanced motion capture system to follow the ball’s trajectory and the catcher’s hand position, the entire throw was accurately rendered in VR through a head-mounted display. Specifically, the VR headset used the Unity 3D game engine, running on a Windows 10, 64-bit system, consisting of a 2.5 GHz processor with 32 GB RAM.
Three visualizations options were given to the user. The first simulated a realistic catch-and-throw experience, rendering only the ball’s position. The final two options showed either a potential target area where the ball could be caught or a prediction of the ball’s trajectory.
In all three scenarios, users were able to successfully catch the ball. When only the ball’s position was shown, users showcased a 95 percent catch rate of all balls thrown underhand. In the additional two visualizations studied, the catcher demonstrated an altered strategy, where their hand reached the catch location way before the actual catch was made.
“The most apparent explanation is that, without information about the ball’s location, the catcher must rely on the identified target point, changing the task from one requiring higher brain functions to estimate trajectory to a simpler, visually guided pointing task,” says Pan.
These test results may provide valuable data in order to improve the interaction between VR and dynamic objects in future immersive systems.
To view the VR game of catch in action, watch the video below.