Entropy and Speed: Effects of Obstacle Motion Properties on Avoidance Behavior in Virtual Environment

Avoiding moving obstacles in immersive environments requires adjustments in the walking trajectory and depends on the type of obstacle movement. Previous research studied the impact of speed and direction of motion but not much is known about how predictability of motion impacts human circumvention in terms of distance to the obstacle (proximity). In this paper, we investigate how participants navigate through VR collision avoidance scenarios with obstacles of varying motion characteristics in terms of speed and predictability. We introduce a novel concept of creating unpredictable motion using entropy calculations. We anticipated that higher entropy would increase the proximity distance which we measured with several metrics related to the distance from the obstacle and centre of the scene. We found a significant influence of motion speed and predictability on proximity-related metrics, with participants exhibiting a tendency to maintain larger distances in scenarios where obstacle speed and entropy were higher. We also outline two decision-making strategies for avoidance behaviour and investigate the factors that influence individuals’ selection of one strategy over the other.