Section: New Results

Collaboration in VR

Participants: Damien Clergeaud and Pascal Guitton

The Airbus company regularly uses virtual reality for design, manufacturing and maintenance. We work with them on collaborative interaction in order to enable an efficient collaboration between operators immersed in the same virtual environment from remote locations and with heterogeneous equipment (large displays, CAVE, HMD). More precisely, we have developped tools to point and manipulate 3D objects, to remotely visualize the virtual environment, to be aware of remote manipulations and to describe tools and components trajectories (Figure 7). These tools have been validated by Airbus experts and the next step is to integrate them in their global process.

We are also working on Through-The-Lens Interaction techniques to ease the collaboration in some asymmetric tasks that requires a guide and an operator. Through-The-Lens techniques enable the guide to interact with the surroundings of the operator in order to help him in the task he has to perfrom. A paper presenting such a technique has been (conditionaly) accepted at IEEE 3DUI 2017.

Figure 7. An immersed user has to perform a virtual task in a complex environment. In order to help the user to be fully aware of the VE, another immersed operator may guide him using a Through-The-Lens metaphor.