Virtual reality locomotion techniques and mental workload: an empirical investigation of point-teleport and directed-steering during virtual task performance

An increasing number of people at leisure and work interact in virtual environments (VE). Expanding movement boundaries in VE beyond the physical movement space available to users requires support by virtual reality (VR) interaction techniques for locomotion. In a virtually simulated production environment with presses and robots 20 participants performed navigation, object-manipulation and target-selection tasks. Based on human factors concepts on system design, workload measurement is used for evaluation of human-centered design of two locomotion techniques, each in two variants (Point-Teleport with curved and straight ray; Directed-Steering with head and wrist-directed motion control). Mental workload was investigated using measures of human performance and ratings during task processing in the virtual manufacturing environment. Task processing using Point-Teleport with a curved ray resulted in relatively lower mental workload than with straight ray. Both variants of Directed-Steering locomotion techniques led to impaired performance mainly related to visually induced motion sickness. The findings support selection of locomotion techniques for human-centered task performance in VE regarding human factors design strategies for system design.