Effect of spatial enhancement technology on input through the keyboard in virtual reality environment. (July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yang, Zhen; Chen, Cheng; Lin, Yuqing; Wang, Duming; Li, Hongting; Xu, Weidan
• Is Part Of: Applied ergonomics. Volume 78(2019)
• Page Start: 164
• Page End: 175
• Publication Date: 2019-07
• Subjects: Virtual reality -- Spatial enhancement technology -- Text input; Human engineering -- Periodicals; 620.82
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apergo.2019.03.006
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0003-6870

Abstract

Abstract: Scientific developments have enabled the application of virtual reality (VR) technology in various fields. However, this technology is disadvantaged by low recognition, existence of bias, lack of precision, and fatigue of text input in VR environments. To address these problems, this study proposed a spatial enhancement technique. This study investigated the effectiveness of spatial enhancement keys of a virtual keyboard from various angles and explored the impact of enhanced response time and enhanced protrusion distance on the spatial enhancement technology. Finally, the following conclusions are obtained: (1) The average text input performance of the keyboard using the spatial enhancement technique is significantly better than that of the ordinary virtual keyboard without using the spatial enhancement technique. (2) The recommended time interval for enhanced response time and the protrusion distance are 0–100 ms and 1.85 diopter, respectively. The keyboard angle insignificantly affects the input through the keyboard performance. Highlights: The spatial enhancement technique was proposed to promote the recognition and precision of text input in the VR. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of the spatial enhancement technology by performing experiments. The appropriate values of the parameters of the spatial enhancement technique was determined by conducting experiments. This study provided suggestions and references for text input methods and design in the future VR environment.