Human-XR Interaction

XRIOS @ IEEEVR

Over the past decades, eXtended Reality (XR) technologies have been applied to a wide range of industries and occupational areas for maintenance, quality control, training, education, remote collaboration, and so forth. The industries can benefit from XR by providing their employees with timely and efficient instructions. The users (e.g., occupational employees) can improve their work performance while reducing mental and physical workloads through effective XR systems (e.g., Metaverse, Digital Twin). However, as the workplace conditions become diverse, the XR technologies should be adaptive and innovative to meet the new industrial needs. Furthermore, as XR applications supporting industrial and occupational tasks include physical movements and activities, it is necessary to perform a variety of assessments from ergonomics and physiological perspectives.

This workshop—eXtended Reality for Industrial and Occupational Supports (XRIOS)—aims to identify the current state of XR research and the gaps in the scope of human factors and ergonomics, mainly related to the industrial and occupational tasks, and discuss potential future research directions. XRIOS will build a community that bridges XR developers, human factors and ergonomics researchers interested in industrial and occupational applications.

Mixed Reality-integrated soft wearable biosensing glove for manipulating objects, DOI: 10.1016/j.biosx.2023.100343.

The wearable biosensing glove with an integrated capacitive pressure sensor evaluated how subjects interact directly and indirectly interact with objects. The direct mode describes a user’s direct touching and manipulating objects in MR. In contrast, in the indirect mode, objects are located far away and touched via a narrow light beam. The virtual object measurement parameters include mass, movement latency, dynamic friction coefficient, angular drag coefficient, and linear drag coefficient. The experimental results with human subjects show positive, linear relationships between pinching force and dynamic friction coefficient physics parameters during the direct manipulation mode. Collectively, the MR-enabled wearable biosensing glove system offers unique advantages in detecting physical interactions and sensory feedback for various rehabilitation applications and MR human-machine interfaces.

XR Vest: A Novel System for Demonstration-Based Learning of Safety Skills, DOI: 10.1109/TLT.2023.3260760.

This work investigates the design and usability of a novel eXtended Reality (XR) Vest, which combines two viewpoints for demonstration-based training (DBT). Traditional modalities for DBT, such as pre-recorded videos and live instruction, are minimally engaging and potentially hazardous resulting in low motivation and knowledge retention. To combat this, works incorporate XR technology to improve training immersiveness, safety, and engagement. Our XR Vest, when worn by a trainer, enables the first-person perspective of immersive XR environments on an integrated tablet while simultaneously watching the third-person motor movements.

Projection-based Mixed Reality Platform, DOI: 10.1109/TLT.2023.3334788.

Spatial mixed reality can increase user’s immersion by projecting a variety of information combined with virtual content onto real-world objects, such as walls or table surfaces. This platform presents visual prompts, texts, photos, videos, CAD models to users for training and active learning purposes.

Gaze-based Multimodal Interactions in AR, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3298598

Gaze interaction is a new controlling method in many user interfaces providing robust interactions between humans and machines in real-time. It can be used in many applications since it is an intrinsic activity of the human body. Gaze interaction often provides reliable information about the intent of the user and is a helpful tool for human behavior modeling.

XR-based Remote Collaboration Interfaces, DOI: 10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100691

Extended reality (XR)-based collaboration is becoming a new trend that offers efficient collaboration for physically distant or co-located users. Since computer-based collaboration is still a widespread approach, this research compares the head-mounted display (HMD)- and the computer-based remote collaboration technologies that enable users to engage and interact through immersive environments for communication and collaboration.