17-03-2014, 08:43 PM
ABSTRACT
Mutual awareness between users working in collaborative virtual
environments is an important factor for efficient collaboration. Several
studies have reported that haptic feedback improves performance
in collaborative tasks. However, few researches have tried
to evaluate the influence of haptic feedback on mutual awareness,
and to link the corresponding measures with the performance and
efficiency factors. This article presents a haptic collaborative modelling
method dedicated to the dynamic adjustment of selection
area. This modelling method intends to improve mutual awareness
between the partners in order to improve the collaboration efficiency.
Index Terms: H.5.2 [Information Interface and Presentation]:
User Interfaces—Haptic I/O,Interaction styles H.5.3 [Information
Interface and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces—
Computer-supported cooperative work
1 INTRODUCTION
Distant collaboration is a promising solution to speed up team
working but in the same time it represents a real challenge to coordinate
work amongst remote partners. In the case of real-time
distant collaboration through virtual environments the communication
between users is limited and cannot support a sufficient mutual
awareness. Mutual or shared situation awareness (SSA) is the
degree of similarity between each member’s perception of a same
given situation [2]. In fact, SSA plays an important role in actions’
coordination between partners and thus provides a better efficiency
for collaborative tasks.
Several works showed that using awareness tools improves collaborative
task performance [4]. These tools add information related
to the partner like the position or the activity. As introduced
in a previous work [3], we adopted a different solution to support
awareness. Instead of providing more visual information about
users, which can overwhelmed users by an excessive amount of
data, we developed a modelling method which depends on the partner’s
actions in order to force each user to be aware of the partner’s
activity.
Moreover, the proposed interaction method integrates a haptic
communication component that effectively communicate, through
a guidance strategy, the required area to manipulate to the partner.
This tools is inspired by the work of Oakley et al.[5] using attraction
forces between partners to provide position information. Their
results showed, through subjective measures, how haptic functions
improved gestural coordination and mutual awareness. On the other
e-mail: adrien.girard[at]limsi.fr
†e-mail:yacine.bellik[at]limsi.fr
‡e-mail:malika.auvray[at]limsi.fr
§e-mail:mehdi.ammi[at]limsi.fr
Figure 1: Size of the selection according the cursor’s position
.
hand, Ullah [6] proposed several haptic functions to improve coordination
during collaborative manipulations of 3d objects. These
functions assisted the partners by keeping them in contact with the
shared object. Their results highlighted the role of haptic functions
to improve the mutual awareness.
Mutual awareness between users working in collaborative virtual
environments is an important factor for efficient collaboration. Several
studies have reported that haptic feedback improves performance
in collaborative tasks. However, few researches have tried
to evaluate the influence of haptic feedback on mutual awareness,
and to link the corresponding measures with the performance and
efficiency factors. This article presents a haptic collaborative modelling
method dedicated to the dynamic adjustment of selection
area. This modelling method intends to improve mutual awareness
between the partners in order to improve the collaboration efficiency.
Index Terms: H.5.2 [Information Interface and Presentation]:
User Interfaces—Haptic I/O,Interaction styles H.5.3 [Information
Interface and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces—
Computer-supported cooperative work
1 INTRODUCTION
Distant collaboration is a promising solution to speed up team
working but in the same time it represents a real challenge to coordinate
work amongst remote partners. In the case of real-time
distant collaboration through virtual environments the communication
between users is limited and cannot support a sufficient mutual
awareness. Mutual or shared situation awareness (SSA) is the
degree of similarity between each member’s perception of a same
given situation [2]. In fact, SSA plays an important role in actions’
coordination between partners and thus provides a better efficiency
for collaborative tasks.
Several works showed that using awareness tools improves collaborative
task performance [4]. These tools add information related
to the partner like the position or the activity. As introduced
in a previous work [3], we adopted a different solution to support
awareness. Instead of providing more visual information about
users, which can overwhelmed users by an excessive amount of
data, we developed a modelling method which depends on the partner’s
actions in order to force each user to be aware of the partner’s
activity.
Moreover, the proposed interaction method integrates a haptic
communication component that effectively communicate, through
a guidance strategy, the required area to manipulate to the partner.
This tools is inspired by the work of Oakley et al.[5] using attraction
forces between partners to provide position information. Their
results showed, through subjective measures, how haptic functions
improved gestural coordination and mutual awareness. On the other
e-mail: adrien.girard[at]limsi.fr
†e-mail:yacine.bellik[at]limsi.fr
‡e-mail:malika.auvray[at]limsi.fr
§e-mail:mehdi.ammi[at]limsi.fr
Figure 1: Size of the selection according the cursor’s position
.
hand, Ullah [6] proposed several haptic functions to improve coordination
during collaborative manipulations of 3d objects. These
functions assisted the partners by keeping them in contact with the
shared object. Their results highlighted the role of haptic functions
to improve the mutual awareness.